The Laws of Science: Jim Tour is a leading scientist at Rice in nanotechnology

Houston Chronicle ^ | January 4, 2010 | Eric Berger

[achilles2000]

As a teen pumping gas on a highway north of New York City, Jim Tour dreamed of becoming a state trooper. It beat filling tanks.

The notion of Tour as a highway cop is almost laughably discordant with present-day reality. Three decades later, the trim, intense, 50-year-old Tour has established himself as one of the leading, if not premier, scientists at Rice University.

And he's learned to dream big.

Four years after Nobel laureate Rick Smalley's untimely death, it is the prolific Tour who as much as anyone has carried on Smalley's groundbreaking legacy in the science of nanotechnology.

Confirmation came last month when, among the more than 720,000 scientists who authored chemistry papers in academic journals during the last decade, Tour found himself among the 10 most-cited authors in the world.

This means the 135 papers he wrote during the last decade had one of the 10 highest rates at which other scientists “cited” them in the references of subsequent research papers.

And small wonder. Tour's work spans an incredible breadth, from building tiny cars and trucks out of molecules, to making computer memory from graphite, building tiny missiles that carry drugs to tumors and trying to cure radiation sickness.

“He is just incredibly creative as a chemist,” said Wade Adams, director of Rice's Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. “He makes molecules dance.”

[achilles2000]

Gosh, and I thought that serious Christianity and science were incompatible....

[achilles2000]

ping

[freedumb2003]

>>Gosh, and I thought that serious Christianity and science were incompatible.<<

Sadly, to many here that is the case.

[max americana]

>And, finally, Tour credits his success to his faith. When he speaks about this, Tour’s angular features sharpen. He closes his eyes. His voice becomes more emotive. “I believe, fundamentally, that God creates us all,” he said.

[Nateman]

...it was Tour's lab that found a way to produce buckyballs in large quantities.

University of Arizona Professor Donald Huffman was the first to mass produce Buckeyballs. In fact he was the first person ever to see what they actually looked like after making enough of them. The Nobel Prize is limited to 3 people for a particular achievement or he would have won one along with Smally.

[coincheck]

What’s a Buckyball? The first thing that comes to mind is the ones found on a male deer, but I don’t think that is what they are talking about;)

[Brugmansian]

Illiterates. The history is fascinating. India, Japan, the Islamic world developed great technologies but always on the level of arts and crafts. Pure science came out of Christianity and the belief the world is rational, the logos is accessible. Allah doesn’t will this today and that tommorow, incantations don’t do it, ritual doesn’t work...there is an underlying truth, both physical and metaphysical which can be understood.

[Nateman]

Buckyball is 60 carbon atoms arraigned together in such a way as to resemble a soccer ball. The third natural form of elemental carbon

[DrewsDad]

As part of those views, Tour says he neither understands nor accepts the notion of macroevolution, that new species evolve on their own.

“I've asked people to explain it to me, and I still don't understand it,” he said. “I hear their explanations and I don't understand it. I understand better than most people how molecules come together, what they can and cannot do. … And I don't understand how macroevolution occurs.”

Perhaps there is not a good explanation for macroevolution. I think most scientists just take it on...uh..."faith".

[airborne]

I would encourage everyone to click on the link and read the entire article.

Fascinating, and powerful, to hear a devout Christian scientist who preaches his faith with such clarity and courage without fear of attack.

It's probably more prevalent than I realize, but I've not seen it.