Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley, co-discoverer of the buckyball and one of the best-known and respected scientists in nanotechnology, died Friday after a long battle with cancer. He was 62.

Smalley, who joined Rice University in 1976, shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with fellow Rice chemist Robert Curl and British chemist Sir Harold Kroto for the discovery of buckminsterfullerence, or “buckyballs,” a new form of carbon. Buckeyballs measure one nanometer in diameter, and their discovery at Rice in 1985 is frequently cited as one of the earliest and most influential discoveries in the development of nanotechnology. The discovery “immediately made feasible the notion of making things from the bottom up, just as physicist Richard Feynman had predicted 50 years earlier,” said Neal Lane, senior fellow in science and technology at the Baker Institute. Dr. Lane noted Smalley’s important contribution not only to science but his crucial role in working to launch the U.S. National Nanotech Initiative (NNI), a sweeping federal research and development program that coordinates the nanotech efforts of nearly two dozen federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and NASA.

Most recently, Dr. Smalley had been working to educate the public, industry leaders, Washington and Austin policy makers, and fellow scientists on how applications of nanotechnology could be used to solve what he described as the number one problem facing humanity in the 21st century—the need for cheap, clean energy.

“Energy is unique not only in its ability to give us answers to most of the world’s ten most pressing problems, but it is uniquely something we can do something about,” Dr. Smalley told a meeting of leading scientists, policy makers, energy specialists and industry leaders on May 3, 2003. “The international community needs to be committed to providing clean, affordable energy, whose supply is sustainable and universally available. We are in search of vast amounts of energy and we need a “technical fix” to the world’s energy crisis.” Smalley, who believed that nanotechnology could hold the answer to the world’s most pressing material needs, added, “The earth is swimming in energy; there is plenty of energy there to be had. The only reason we have a problem is that we haven’t figured out a technical way to do it cheaply.”

To address increasing interest in scientific solutions to our monumental energy challenges, under the leadership of Dr. Smalley, Dr. Wade Adams, Amy Myers Jaffe, and Dr. Mark Wiesner, the James A. Baker III Institute of Rice University, together with the Rice University Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST), and the Rice Environmental and Energy Systems Institute (EESI) developed a program on “Energy and Nanotechnology” at Rice University. The program was aimed to create a dialogue between nanoscience and energy technology experts to share ideas about potential applications from their arena that could lead to resolving both the national and international energy supply predicament. The program sponsored conferences and seminars to bring together policy-makers, scientists, opinion-shapers, and business leaders to showcase potentially revolutionary breakthroughs in the energy technology arena.

In May 2003, the Rice Energy and Nanotechnology program organized a major conclave, Energy and Nanotechnology: Strategy for the Future, which showcased the opportunities that exist to promote revolutionary and important breakthroughs in energy technology. In October 2004, Energy & Nanotechnology Workshop II: Prospects for Solar Energy in the 21st Century investigated the potential contributions of solar-derived energy to a more efficient electricity grid in the United States and the role of nanoscience in advancing solar technology. A new conference, scheduled for November 14-16, Energy & Nanotechnology Workshop III: The Grid and Storage will explore the state of current and emerging electricity science and technology and investigate the opportunities for nanoscience to contribute revolutionary changes to the current system.

Following his beliefs that the future of energy lay in the area of enhanced electricity transmission and storage efficiency, solar energy and electrical battery systems, Smalley began one of his most ambitious scientific research programs, the “Armchair Quantum Wire” project, led by Rice Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory Executive Director, Dr. Howard Schmidt. The project was begun in April with $11 million in funding from NASA. The quantum wire will be a continuous cable of nanotubes that is expected to conduct electricity 10 times better than copper yet have only one-sixth the weight, a zero coefficient of thermal expansion and a tensile strength greater than steel, permitting electricity to be carried over long distances economically with little or no loss of supply and facilitating remote energy sources such as solar power farms.

Dr. Smalley’s vision for the Armchair quantum wire was the eventual development of a distributed store-gen grid for 2050 that would include a vast electrical continental power grid with over 100 million asynchronous local storage units and generation sites, including private households and businesses. This system would be continually innovated by free enterprise, with local generation buying low and selling high to the grid network.

Under Smalley’s vision, optimized local storage systems would be based on improved batteries, hydrogen conversion systems, and fly wheels, while mass primary power input to the grid could come from remote locations with large-scale access to cleaner energy resources (solar farms, stranded natural gas, closed-system clean coal plants, and wave power) to the common grid via carbon nanotubes, high-voltage wires that minimize loss. Excess hydrogen produced in the system could be used in the transportation sector, and excess residential electricity could be used to re-charge plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Innovative technological improvements in long distance, continental power grids that could transport hundreds of gigawatts over a thousand miles instead of a hundred megawatts over the same distance would permit access to very remote sources including large solar farms in the deserts, where local storage can be used as a buffer. Remote nuclear power sources could be located far from populated areas and behind military fences, to address proliferation concerns. Clean coal plants could be located wherever it is convenient and economical to strip out and sequester the CO2.

“Dr. Smalley’s vision for revolutionary change in how energy is produced, distributed and delivered is, in my opinion, the most important policy path yet proposed on how to solve the energy problem,” says Amy Myers Jaffe, Wallace Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies and associate director of the Rice Energy program. “The first time I heard Dr. Smalley lay out this idea for how to fix the energy problem through revolutionary change in electricity, I was stunned by his creativity and brilliance. It was like a bright light beam shooting out of the darkness. It was so innovative and so out of the box, the other energy specialists present at the time couldn’t even respond with comments.”

Dr. Smalley’s accomplishments as a scientist were formidable but his contribution to society is best measured by his passion that science can and will deliver a better world. “Be a scientist, Save the World” was his mantra, and his commitment to that ideal inspired his colleagues, admirers and political leaders alike. “He had the ability to persuade others with a rare intensity of thought and spirit,” noted Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences at Rice University and Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry. His engaging humor, luminous smile, abiding friendship, and commitment to greatness, continues to inspire us to carry out his life work to both honor of his memory and reach the important goals that he has laid out for us.