The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to confer the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 to three scientists for developing a technique to produce detailed images of life’s complex molecular machinery. Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson have thereby received a £825,000 prize for developing an effective method for generating 3D images of life-building structures. The technique they developed, called cryo-electron microscopy, has allowed the structure of biomolecules to be studied in high-resolution for the first time, an advance that revolutionised the field of biochemistry.