nanosurface 2006-11-26 05:41
Richard Smalley
[size=3][b]Richard Smalley left his mark on science by laying the foundationfor nanotechnology as we know it, then he tried to save the world
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[size=3]Bethany Halford
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Today marks the 10th anniversary of what maybe the most influential event in the history of nanotechnology. On Oct. 9, 1996, [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/curl-autobio.html]Robert F. Curl Jr.[/url], [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/kroto-autobio.html]Harold Kroto[/url], and [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/smalley-autobio.html]Richard E. Smalley[/url] won the [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/index.html]Nobel Prize in Chemistry[/url]for the discovery of fullerenes. It's not the buckyball's remarkableproperties or some grand validation of nanoscience that makes theoccasion momentous. Instead, the Nobel Prize became a watershed fornanotechnology because Rick Smalley was one of the three brilliantscientists who stood on a stage in Stockholm that December to claim it.
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The field of nanotechnology exploded in the nine years between 1996and Smalley's death from leukemia last October at age 62. It continuesto grow apace, thanks in part to the momentum he built. In research,development, and funding, no single person pushed the field furtherthan Smalley. "With his flamboyantly uncompromising and inspiringpresentation style, he became the most visible champion ofnanotechnology and its promise to lead to revolutionary sustainabletechnologies," Kroto wrote in [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1637138,00.html]Smalley's obituary for [i]The Guardian[/i][/url][i].W
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[/i]To his colleagues, Smalley proselytized nanotechnology with anear-prophetic vision. So when the king of Sweden placed that covetedgold medal in his hand, the [url=http://www.rice.edu/]Rice University[/url] professor knew he had also been handed this golden opportunity: the chance to say something and have people truly listen.(hF } d:Db
As [url=http://nobelprize.org/]2006's newly minted Laureates[/url]will soon discover, the same opportunity is granted to all Nobel Prizewinners. A few squander it. Many further their own enterprise with it.Some follow their passions and try to change the world with it. Few useit as deftly as Smalley did. [/size][table=300][tr][td][size=3][img=300,219]http://pubs.acs.org/cen/img/84/i41/8441coverimg1.jpg[/img]RICE UNIVERSITY[/size][/td][/tr][tr][td][size=3][b]Giant[/b] Smalley (circa 1986) atop the AP2, the apparatus used to find C60.
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Nobel Prize in hand, Smalley began knocking on doors at the highestlevels of government. He spoke. They listened. Money poured intonanoscience research.._ ~?(e St-sz
Including the $1.2 billion in President George W. Bush's 2007 budget, over $6.5 billion has been invested in the [url=http://www.nano.gov/]National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI)[/url],a federal program that coordinates the efforts in nanoscale science,engineering, and technology for 25 different federal agencies. MihailC. Roco, senior adviser for nanotechnology at the [url=http://www.nsf.gov/]National Science Foundation[/url]and the key architect of NNI, says Smalley's prestige and passion gaveNNI gravitas at a critical time. Many people worked hard to establishNNI, Roco points out, but without Smalley, it's unlikely the programwould have achieved the same level of success in such a short time.
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"Rick had a special kind of influence," Roco says. The Nobel Prizegot legislators to listen to Smalley a little more closely, Roco adds.But it was the way he spoke that made those powerful men and womenunlock the nation's coffers.
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Roco points out that when scientists ask legislators to loosentaxpayers' purse strings for any type of promising new science,Washington's decisionmakers always want to know: Is this sciencefiction? "Speaking about the future, scientists are very careful not tomake mistakes. They say, 'I don't have a crystal ball, but ... .' Rickspoke in a different way. He told stories."q,H ?;i5K X7dU u"x
When [url=http://www.rice.edu/media/smalleytestimony.htm]Smalley testified before the House of Representatives[/url]about establishing NNI in 1999, he had been fighting leukemia for overa year. "I sit before you today with very little hair on my head. Itfell out a few weeks ago as a result of the chemotherapy I've beenundergoing to treat a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," Smalley told therepresentatives. "While I am very optimistic, this chemotherapy is avery blunt tool. It consists of small molecules which are toxic-theykill cells in my body. Although they are meant to kill only the cancercells, they kill hair cells too, and cause all sorts of other havoc.
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"Now, I'm not complaining. Twenty years ago, without even this crudechemotherapy, I would already be dead. But 20 years from now, I amconfident we will no longer have to use this blunt tool. By then,nanotechnology will have given us specially engineered drugs, which arenanoscale cancer-seeking missiles, a molecular technology thatspecifically targets just the mutant cancer cells in the human body andleaves everything else blissfully alone. ... I may not live to see it.But, with your help, I am confident it will happen. Cancer-at least thetype that I have-will be a thing of the past."Z0o
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Roco still recalls how the legislators lingered, waiting to shake Smalley's hand after the hearing.
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"It takes a certain amount of care and skill to speak to members of Congress," says [url=http://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7eneal/]Neal F. Lane[/url],a former director of the White House Office of Science & TechnologyPolicy and former president Bill Clinton's chief science adviser from1998 to 2001. "It's not that they're not intelligent people. It's justthat most aren't scientists, and they don't have a lot of time." [/size][table][tr][td][size=3][img=388,178]http://pubs.acs.org/cen/img/84/i41/8441cover_signingcxd.jpg[/img]Courtesy of the White House[/size][/td][/tr][tr][td][size=3][b]Nano's Starting Line [/b]Smalley (fifth from left) was the only academic present when PresidentBush signed the 21st Century Nanotechnology R&D Act in 2003.
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The academics[/b] who are most effective inWashington—Lane calls them civic scientists—can "tell an interestingstory in a succinct manner, where not only is it clear what thefundamental science and engineering aspects are, but also what theimpact on society will be. And you have to do it in such a way thatwhat you say sounds credible and not hyped," Lane says.
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According to Lane, who also worked alongside Smalley as a physicsprofessor at Rice, Smalley's communication skills coupled with hisscientific credibility and his excitement, enthusiasm, and passion madehim extremely influential.w7Hy igo!A
Smalley's influence was so great, critics grouse, that his petproject of carbon nanotechnology received more funding than it merited,possibly at the expense of other nanoscience research.J _w(^e;R
"Rick always felt that even if you're in academic science, you oughtto be able to go to the people who are paying you—the taxpayers—andjustify in terms they can understand what you're doing and why," says [url=http://www.its.caltech.edu/%7eheathgrp/]James R. Heath[/url], one of the Rice graduate students who discovered C60. He is currently a chemistry professor at California Institute of Technology.
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[url=http://www.jmtour.com/]James M. Tour[/url], a chemistryprofessor at Rice and close friend of Smalley's, points out thatSmalley didn't really start to impact science policy until he was inhis mid- to late-40s. "It wasn't until the discovery of C60 that he would begin his life as a civic scientist," Tour says. [/size][table][tr][td][size=3][img=280,283]http://pubs.acs.org/cen/img/84/i41/8441coverimg6.jpg[/img][/size][/td][/tr][/table][size=3]For Smalley, there was life before the buckyball. Long before thatnanorevelation, he became famous in physical chemistry circles forbuilding massive machines to tackle science's most slippery problems.He built the 12-foot-tall AP2 apparatus to create clusters so he couldunderstand catalysis on the atomic scale. Although he didn't know itthen, this machine would later open the door to nanoscience forSmalley, and consequently, many others.
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"Rick liked to say, 'We do things big in Texas,' " Kroto recalls ofhis first encounter with Smalley clambering over AP2, a monster solarge you needed to go inside it to clean it. The machine would play apart in changing Kroto's life too, as well as those of Curl andgraduate students Heath and Sean O'Brien. The fullerene five, as loversof alliteration might call them.l7@%L2rH ~D
The story of those five scientists and the two weeks in September 1985 when they discovered "Bucky," as Smalley liked to call C60,has been told by writers far more gifted than the author of thisarticle. It would be foolish to try to reproduce it here, other than tosay this: It's tempting to compare Smalley, Kroto, Curl, O'Brien, andHeath to the giants of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Exploration]Age of Exploration[/url].The latter were searching out new trade routes, and the former weretrying to understand the chemistry surrounding carbon stars. In bothcases, their efforts unveiled an entirely new world.iR;O)eu,{9F~W
It's also tempting to say that before September 1985, the world ofpure carbon was flat. At that time, scientists had little interest indiamond's tough scaffold or graphite's honeycombed plains. Thediscovery of C60 changed that. Buckminsterfullerene, thatlittle soccer ball of carbon atoms, worked like a seed and planteditself in the minds of chemists and physicists around the world, whereit sprouted and flourished into today's vast landscape of carbonnanotechnology.G,CL#a_ m
It's a nice story, but it's not true. It's hyperbole, anoccupational hazard for writers attempting to capture the discovery offullerene's significance.
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"We thought we were the first people to ever think of C60," Curl says. "That turned out to be far from the truth." Just like others had come to the New World long before [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus]Christopher Columbus[/url], buckminsterfullerene had been bouncing around chemists' brains for some time.)_7k Do @5mj\7c
When their first C60 paper had been accepted in [i]Nature[/i] ([b]1985,[/b] [i]318[/i],162), the group sent preprints of the article to every organic chemistthey could think of. By Curl's estimate, 200 copies went out. "Itturned out to be a very good thing," he recalls.Tl
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They learned that [url=http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/inmemoriam/orvillelchapman.htm]Orville L. Chapman[/url],an organic chemist at the University of California, Los Angeles, hadbeen trying to synthesize Bucky for five years. No less than threetheoretical treatments of C60 had appeared in theliterature. The earliest paper suggesting carbon could form a stable60-atom structure came from the Japanese physical organic chemist [url=http://act.jst.go.jp/content/h10-s/material/M12/PageRepresentative_e.html]Eiji G. Osawa[/url] of Toyohashi University of Technology ([i]Kagaku[/i] [b]1970,[/b] [i]25[/i], 854).
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AP2 was not the first machine to make a buckyball. Andrew Kaldor'sgroup at Exxon in New Jersey had studied carbon with AP2's cousin in1984. Although a cluster of 60 carbon atoms stood out in their massspectrum, it wasn't enough to give them pause. "I suspect the membersof that original group at Exxon still regret that they did not considerin more depth why the peak for C60 appeared to be about 20% more intense than its neighbors," Smalley said in his [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/smalley-lecture.html]Nobel lecture[/url]. "But to be fair, at the time, neither did we."
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[url=http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2006/01/10/511498.aspx]Scientific zeitgeist[/url]-thephenomenon wherein the same scientific discovery is made at about thesame time by multiple investigators working independently-tells us thateven if the fateful events of September 1985 had never taken place,someone eventually would have discovered C60.
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But ask Smalley's contemporaries in research, business, andgovernment if they think the field of nanotechnology as we know itwould exist if anyone other than Rick Smalley had helped discoverfullerenes, and you hear the same answer over and over: No.[/size][table][tr][td][size=3][img=400,116]http://pubs.acs.org/cen/img/84/i41/8441coverimg4.jpg[/img]P. M. Ajayan & R. S. Kane/[i]PNAS[/i] © 2004 (left), Vin Crespi/Penn State Physics (center), Kenji Hata & Don Futaba/[i]Science[/i] © 2004 (right)[/size][/td][/tr][tr][td][size=3][b]Nanoscapes [/b]Capillary forces from evaporating fluids push carbon nanotubes into athin foam (left image) that may have applications in cushioning impactsor sound dampening; (center image) what the view from within aflattened, twisted carbon nanotube would be; (right image) pillars ofdensely packed nanotubes (250 µm in diameter and 1 mm tall) grow fromlithographically patterned catalyst islands. df$O1p7s\'[
[/size][/td][/tr][/table][size=3][b]"I think people[/b] have forgotten that at first it wasvery difficult, particularly for chemists, to grasp that carbon couldcurve into a sphere," says [url=http://www.fsu.edu/profiles/kroto/]Kroto, now on the faculty[/url] at [url=http://www.fsu.edu/]Florida State University[/url], Tallahassee.{5~x(Zji%a C pRg
At first, Smalley, along with Kroto and Curl, protected nascentnanoscience by fending off the attacks from such nonbelievers. Oncescientists were convinced, Smalley nurtured nanotechnology. He sentbuckyballs to other researchers. He helped organize fullereneconferences. He egged his competitors on.
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Between 1985 and 1990, about 250 fullerene papers were published. Then, two physicists, [url=http://www.physics.arizona.edu/physics/personnel/emeritus/huffman.html]Donald R. Huffman[/url] of the University of Arizona and [url=http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/krae/Group/Kraetschmer/wkraetschmer.html]Wolfgang Krätschmer[/url] of Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, in Heidelberg, Germany, figured out how to mass produce C60. By 1991, just one year later, the number of buckyball papers reached into the thousands.[/size][table=183][tr][td][size=3][img=232,232]http://pubs.acs.org/cen/img/84/i41/8441coverimg3.jpg[/img]RICE UNIVERSITY[/size][/td][/tr][tr][td][size=3][b]Teacher [/b]Even after he won the Nobel Prize, Smalley continued to teach chemistry and physics to undergraduates at Rice.
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Smalley's group was working on the same problem when Huffman andKrätschmer beat him to the finish line. After seeing a preprint of thepaper, Smalley called Huffman and asked for a sample of C60 to show at a meeting he was about to attend. " 'It's really important for chemists to see C60, to just see it,' " Huffman recalls Smalley imploring.
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Huffman had no idea what kind of person Smalley was. Since the paperhadn't come out yet, and their competition had been fierce, Huffman puthis name and the names of his coworkers prominently on thebuckyball-coated slide he sent to Houston.fF T f,xQ
Soon after, he got a letter from Smalley. "Dear Don," it read: "Itwas great to get your express mail package today and see Bucky for thefirst time. Although I was certainly a bit jealous when I read yourgreat paper, it's just so incredibly beautiful. I just can't stopsmiling." Not long after, dark crystals of C60 graced the cover of [i]Nature[/i] when the journal published Huffman and Krätschmer's report ([i]Nature[/i] [b]1990, [/b][i]347[/i], 354).
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But Bucky ultimately turned out to be a disappointment. By the timeSmalley, Kroto, and Curl accepted the Nobel Prize in 1996, no practicalapplications had been forthcoming, despite six years of intensiveresearch efforts.h
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"Winning the Nobel Prize put fullerenes on the public stage," Curlexplains. "Our friends and neighbors would ask us, 'What can the stuffdo? What good is it?' I personally felt awkward trying to answer thisquestion."*?|x4GY}wgz5H@
They were like parents of a brilliant and adored child, who, despiteevery advantage, had grown into a feckless adult still living in thebasement. Some of chemistry's brightest minds were working onfullerenes at top labs with mountains of cash. Yet no applications wereimminent. Bucky needed to get a job. Smalley keenly felt thatresponsibility, Curl says, and it stung him.
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When it became clear to Smalley that Bucky would never get a realjob, at least not in Smalley's lifetime, he abandoned fullereneresearch completely. He focused on carbon nanotubes, first discoveredin Japanese physicist [url=http://www.labs.nec.co.jp/Eng/innovative/E1/myself.html]Sumio Iijima's lab at NEC Corp.[/url],in Tokyo. It was a more difficult system, but one Smalley thought hadricher promise. The Smalley lab's slogan became, "If it ain't tubes, wedon't do it."%`lwO"q0m {OH's
In the past, Curl says, Smalley's research strategy had been toforge fearlessly into a research frontier, establish a foundation, andleave it to do the same thing in an entirely different area. "Before1990, he'd adopt a new project every two or three years. Afternanotubes, that was it."
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"Rick wasn't the sort of person who liked to revisit fields," adds [url=http://chemistry.ucr.edu/groups/HaddonGroup/]Robert C. Haddon[/url], a professor at the University of California, Riverside. "He liked to pioneer them."
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Smalley brought this same pioneering spirit to the field of carbonnanotubes. In May of 1996, Smalley and Haddon, a scientist with BellLabs at the time, had dinner with several colleagues on the eve of aconference in Israel. "Rick said: 'Tomorrow the world is going tochange.' " Haddon remembers it well. "Rick was not given tooverstatement.""b
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The following day, Smalley presented his process for making large batches of high-quality carbon nanotubes ([i]Science[/i][b] 1996,[/b] [i]273[/i], 483). Haddon reviewed the paper for [i]Science[/i]."I said they should publish it twice," he recalls. Haddon says thereport prompted him to leave Bell Labs so he could strike out on hisown nanotube research project./~(XI9~/uv2R/N)Z [
Haddon wasn't Smalley's only convert. Not by a long shot. Theevangelism Smalley had for Bucky only grew stronger with carbonnanotubes.
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During a four-day carbon nanotube symposium honoring Smalley at lastmonth's American Chemical Society national meeting in San Francisco,giant after intellectual giant in carbon nanotechnology echoed thewords of IBM's [url=http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/bio.avouris.html]Phaedon Avouris[/url]:"I owe my research in carbon nanotubes to Rick." Avouris said he hadzero interest in nanotubes until the day Smalley called him andsuggested he give nanotubes a try. U FG nd)`t
Even those who were already true believers in carbon nanotechnology, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor [url=http://web.mit.edu/physics/facultyandstaff/faculty/millie_dresselhaus.html]Mildred S. Dresselhaus[/url], say much of the early work on nanotubes "wouldn't have happened without Rick, because he provided the nanotubes."o
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Smalley gave his competitors the basic materials they needed to beathim. Consider how radical that attitude is for a scientist. Scientistshoard their golden eggs. They don't give them away and expect theirriches to grow 10-fold.
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Take German chemists [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1950/diels-bio.html]Otto P. H. Diels[/url] and [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1950/alder-bio.html]Kurt Alder[/url], for example. In the original report of their [url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1950/index.html]Nobel Prize-winning cycloaddition reaction[/url] ([i]Ann.[/i] [b]1928,[/b] [i]460[/i],98) and its use in total synthesis, Diels and Alder wrote, "Weexplicitly reserve for ourselves the application of the reactiondiscovered by us to the solution of such problems."1^}{c$_(wl
Even more remarkable, chemists honored their wishes for 23 years.The Diels-Alder reaction didn't figure prominently in natural productsynthesis until 1951, the year after Diels and Alder accepted theirNobel Prize in Chemistry. i$v"}.s#h@
"For a pretty long time, Rick basically had the world's supply ofcarbon nanotubes," says Bob Gower, president and chief executiveofficer of Houston-based [url=http://www.cnanotech.com/index-2.html]Carbon Nanotechnologies[/url],a company he started with Smalley. Thanks to Smalley's laser-ovenprocess, he could make a few grams of nanotubes at a time. "Rick justwanted to get the material into the hands of competent researchers,"Gower says.
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Of course, Smalley won the Nobel Prize just a few months after thenanotube paper was published. After that, he had no reason to keep theworld's supply of nanotubes all to himself.] aW!v!b+[m
It's more romantic, though, to imagine Smalley as a pioneer on thecarbon nanotechnology frontier, looking out upon the vast new carbonworld and seeing more than any one person could explore in a lifetime.8t [YC\f
That's one heroic version of Smalley's life, although probably notthe one he would want people to remember. He'd prefer that you rememberhis crusade to solve the world's energy crisis, [url=http://www.rice.edu/media/smalleycongress2.htm]which he took up in earnest in 2002[/url].Smalley foresaw a bleak future when the world reached the bottom of itsproverbial oil barrel: war, starvation, filthy air. It was a problemsomeone would have to solve. Why not take a crack at it? After all, hewas Rick Smalley.E+o-eL8M6RH
"Rick just studied the problem like the incredible brain that he was," says [url=http://cnst.rice.edu/about.cfm?doc_id=1214]Wade Adams[/url], director of the [url=http://cnst.rice.edu/index.cfm]Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology[/url]at Rice. "He stewed on it for a while and decided that we need toconvert our global energy system from one that transports energy in theform of mass, oil for example, to a system that transports electronsaround the world." d5\0y\K _0D-d
Smalley believed carbon nanotubes could be the wires and storagematerials in this new energy system. He envisioned them laid out in agrid, crisscrossing the globe. Get enough electrons flowing and yousolve the energy problem. Solve the energy problem for everyone, andpeace and prosperity will follow. L+\3Bv3jb~(H
It sounds more than a little self-serving that Smalley chose carbonnanotubes-the focus of his research and a product sold by the companyhe founded-as the central solution to a problem as massive as theenergy crisis. Adams disagrees. The entire field of nanotechnologywould be necessary for generating and collecting energy, he says.Smalley just thought carbon nanotubes were the best bet for storing andtransporting energy.o Po/K c h5F
"Smalley had a true mastery of how to select problems in science. Hejust selected one blockbuster after another," Haddon remarks. "If he'dlived a bit longer he'd have probably solved the energy crisis."[/size][table][tr][td][size=3][img=313,203]http://pubs.acs.org/cen/img/84/i41/8441coverimg5.jpg[/img]/O7{!R1LJ0aa9z}1D.^
Ray H. Baughman/[i]Science[/i] © 2005[/size][/td][/tr][tr][td][size=3][b]Bright Idea [/b] Sheets made from carbon nanotube yarns light up when a voltage is applied.
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Some People say[/b] Smalley's message is starting to get through. The [url=http://www.energy.gov/index.htm]Department of Energy[/url] got a healthy boost in the 2007 federal budget, and President Bush gave renewable energy a shout out in the [url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006/index.html]2006 State of the Union address[/url].Others say prices at the pump topping $3.00 per gallon accomplishedmore for renewable energy in six months than Smalley did in three years.b&}CK w,M p;U
Either way, with gas prices creeping down, it's too bad Smalleyisn't around to remind Washington's most powerful people that we havean energy problem. Debbie Smalley, Rick's widow, is trying to keep hismessage alive with [url=http://energysos.org/]EnergySOS[/url]. The program aims to teach energy awareness to children as part of its mission.
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Smalley's legacy in nanotechnology seems far more secure. It will behard to fritter away the government's $6.5 billion investment innanoscience. And Smalley's former students and postdocs now holdpositions at many of the world's most prestigious schools.
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"We all miss Rick Smalley," says John H. Marburger III, director of the [url=http://www.ostp.gov/]White House Office of Science & Technology Policy[/url]and Bush's science adviser. "Rick left a legacy of optimism about thepromise of nanotechnology. The field has many champions, and willcontinue to thrive, but Rick's good natured and thoughtful approach tothe contentious issues will be missed."rpm}s7N0G
Smalley built the capital of his nanoscience kingdom at Rice. Eventhough the king has been gone for nearly a year, Rice continues tobustle with nanotechnology activity. Rice's Tour, along with hiscolleague [url=http://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7eche/people/faculty/pasquali/pasquali.html]Matteo Pasquali[/url],have taken over the labs at the research center Smalley founded. "I'mmoving research more toward applications," he says. The center took ahit in funding immediately after Smalley passed away, going from aworking budget of $3.5 million to $2 million. Tour says the funding hasalmost returned to $3.5 million.8VF
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In fact, if you didn't notice the center was renamed the Richard E.Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology in his memory,you might think nothing has changed at all. You might even thinkSmalley still walks its halls.c_+[ W*PQ
Most of Smalley's graduate students and postdocs continue to work onthe projects they established with him. His executive assistant, HazelCole, says, "I have to say I still work for him in some fashion." Ayear after his death, Smalley is still influential enough to show up onthe cover of this magazine.2I#}3O I-X
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How Smalley managed to conjure that air of immortality may be hisneatest trick. But Smalley's memory will fade. Will others step forwardand push nanoscience ahead as gracefully as he did? Or will October bethe month nanotechnology marks the anniversaries of its two mostimportant events: the month Rick Smalley won the Nobel Prize inChemistry and the month nanotechnology lost Rick Smalley.[/size](_1]Vx:Vyh
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