Dr Martin Oeggerli at Micronaut GmBH, Basel, Switzerland, is this year’s winner of the Lennart Nilsson Award.

Martin Oeggerli holds a PhD in medical molecular biology. Since 2005, he works as a freelance science photographer, collaborating with scientists in Basel and elsewhere.

Bring out their inherent beauty

Martin Oeggerli uses the scanning electron microscope to image invisibly small organisms and biological structures, which he then painstakingly colors to bring out their inherent beauty. The stunning images help us understand the intricacies of nature’s designs and make biology accessible to everyone.

Motivation:

Dr. Martin Oeggerli is the recipient of the Lennart Nilsson Award 2022 in recognition of his ability to illuminate science and reveal the beauty of the microcosm using the scanning electron microscope.

Featured image: Artistic coloration of the microbiome present in a healthy human gut, containing billions of intestinal bacteria. This image has been created using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in combination with selectively assigning different colors to different bacteria species and structures. Copyrights: © Martin Oeggerli / Micronaut (2015), supported by Pathology, University Hospital Basel, HP Marti, Swiss TPH, and School of Life Sciences, FHNW. Photo: Martin Oeggerli

Previous winners

Read more: Ed Boyden: Making the invisible visible

Read more: Xiaowei Zhuang: Revealing the beautiful world of cell biology 

Read more: The Lennart Nilsson Award 2020