Posted on 10/28/2005 2:11:17 PM PDT by null and void
Oct. 28, 2005 - Richard Smalley, the Nobel Prize-winning nanotechnology researcher who was also an ardent supporter of commercial nanotechnology development, died today of cancer. He was 62.
Smalley shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996 with Robert Curl and Sir Harry Kroto for discovering the C60 molecule, a soccer ball-shaped form of carbon called buckminsterfullerene, or buckyballs.
Born June 6, 1943, Smalley studied at Hope College in Michigan and the University of Michigan before earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at Princeton University in 1973. He joined the faculty at Rice University in Houston in 1976 where he rose to become chair of the chemistry department as well as a professor in the physics department.
He was the founding director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice and was director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.
More recently, his work turned to the commercial applications of carbon nanotubes, a form of carbon related to the buckyballs he was famous for co-discovering. He was a scientific adviser to biotech startup C Sixty, which is investigating the use of fullerenes for biopharmaceutical applications and was chairman of Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc., a company developing manufacturing methods for carbon nanotubes. Smalley received the Lifetime Achievement award from Small Times magazine in 2003.
- Small Times staff
He was smart enough, strong enough, and gosh darn it...people liked him.
. . . and he was a leadpenny.
RIP
For your Geezer Geek Ping list?
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Funny. :)
R.I.P., Smalley.
Eh?
I try. I'm always amazed at how names fit careers/lives. Someone named Smalley working in nanotech, for one of countless examples.
Not exactly Silicon Valley, but...
Rest in Peace, sir.
Yeah. Otherwise buckminsterfullerene would have been called soccerballene...
Wow, a Nobel Prize winner who actually deserved one.
I had the honor of meeting with him a couple of times. He contributed greatly to our civilization. May his dreams be made real.
Tell us about him please?
Why oh why couldn't this have been STEWART Smalley?
I know that. I was just getting a little (sniff sniff) emotional, ya' know. :)
'sok...
He had a gift for making very complex science understandable. As a scientist he had the vision to push commercialization while many were content with basic research. The company he founded has an incredible string of nanotech patents. His high-pressure, carbon monoxide process for making nanotubes holds the promise of making a refinery waste gas into the world's most valuable and versatile new material, single walled carbon nanotubes. I'm sure there will be informative eulogies written.
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