Gerd Binnig (born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.He was born in Frankfurt am Main and played in the ruins of the city during his childhood. His family lived partly in Frankfurt and partly in Offenbach 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.