Binnig was born inFrankfurt am Main and played in the ruins of the city during his childhood. His family lived partly inFrankfurt and partly inOffenbach am Main, and he attended school in both cities. At the age of 10, he decided to become a physicist, but he soon wondered whether he had made the right choice. He concentrated more on music, playing in a band. He also started playing the violin at 15 and played in his school orchestra.[1]
Binnig studied physics at theGoethe University Frankfurt, gaining a bachelor's degree in 1973 and remaining there to do a PhD with in Werner Martienssen's group, supervised by Eckhardt Hoenig, and being awarded to him in 1978.[3]
In 1978, Binnig accepted an offer fromIBM to join theirZurich research group, where he worked withHeinrich Rohrer,Christoph Gerber andEdmund Weibel. There they developed thescanning tunneling microscope (STM), an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level.[4]The Nobel committee described the effect that the invention of the STM had on science, saying that "entirely new fields are opening up for the study of the structure of matter."[2] The physical principles on which the STM was based were already known before the IBM team developed the STM, but Binnig and his colleagues were the first to solve the significant experimental challenges involved in putting it into effect.[2]
The IBM Zurich team were soon recognized with a number of prizes: the German Physics Prize, the Otto Klung Prize, the Hewlett Packard Prize and the King Faisal Prize.[1] In 1986, Binnig and Rohrer shared half of theNobel Prize in Physics, the other half of the Prize was awarded toErnst Ruska.
In 1987 Binnig was appointedIBM Fellow. In the same year, he started the IBM Physics group Munich, working on creativity[8] and atomic force microscopy.[9]
In 1994 Professor Gerd Binnig foundedDefiniens which turned in the year 2000 into a commercial enterprise. The company developedCognition Network Technology to analyze images just like the human eye and brain are capable of doing.[10]
In 1969, Binnig married Lore Wagler, a psychologist, and they have a daughter born inSwitzerland and a son born in California.[1] His hobbies include reading, swimming, and golf.
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