During the last years, atomic force microscopy (AFM) has developed from a microscopy tool for solid state surface science towards a method employed in many scientific disciplines such as biology to investigate individual molecules on a nanometer scale. This article describes the current status of the imaging possibilities of AFM on RNA, IgG and gold-labelled cell adhesion molecules, as well as of measurements of intermolecular binding forces between biomolecules in order to investigate their molecular structure, function and elasticity.