[2] He received his undergraduate degree from New College of Florida, and his PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied electron tunneling and Josephson junctions.

[4] In the 1970s, Hansma began working in electron tunneling spectroscopy, and moved to STM-based experiments by the early 1980s.

[6] Over the 1980s, Hansma worked in conjunction with IBM Zurich, researching the use of probe microscopy and its use in a variety of different fields.

[7] As a part of this work, he co-developed three scanning tunneling microscopes for the University of California, Santa Barbara.

[10] This included the use of AFMs in genetic research, using them to observe DNA and RNA molecules in manner that did not disturb their natural interactions during the late 1990s.