Prof Roland Wiesendanger studied physics at the University of Basel, where he received his Ph.D. in 1987 and his Habilitation degree in 1990, working in the field of scanning tunnelling microscopy. In 1992 he received an offer for a full professor position from the University of Hamburg related with the launch of the Microstructure Advanced Research Center Hamburg (MARCH). In Hamburg, Roland Wiesendanger has initiated the Center of Competence in Nano-scale Analysis "HanseNanoTec", the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center Hamburg (INCH), the Collaborative Research Center 668 of the German Research Foundation entitled "Magnetism from the single atom to the nanostructure", and the Cluster of Excellence "Nanospintronics" of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Since end of the eighties, Roland Wiesendanger pioneered the technique of Spin-Polarized Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy and Spectroscopy which allowed the first real-space observation of magnetic structures at the atomic level. Roland Wiesendanger also contributed significantly to the development of Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM) and Magnetic Exchange Force Microscopy. Roland Wiesendanger is author or co-author of 450 scientific publications and 2 textbooks, and editor or co-editor of 7 monographs and 7 conference proceedings. He presented more than 430 talks worldwide. For his outstanding research contributions, Roland Wiesendanger has been awarded with the Gaede-Prize of the German Vacuum Society in 1992, the Max Auwärter Prize in 1992, the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize in 1999, the Philip Morris Research Prize in 2003, the ERC Advanced Grant Award in 2008, and the Nanotechnology Recognition Award of the American Vacuum Society in 2010. He is an elected member of the German Academy of Sciences "Leopoldina" (since 2000), the Hamburg Academy of Sciences (since 2005), and the German Academy of Technical Sciences (since 2008). Since 2012, he is Honorary Professor of the Harbin Institute of Technology (China).