Richard Smalley
1943–2005
Nanotech Pioneer and Nobel Laureate
by Jade Boyd
Rice chemist and buckyball discoverer became statesman for nanotechnology
Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, co-discoverer of the buckyball and one of the best-known and respected scientists in nanotechnology, died in Houston on October 28 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 buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyballs,” a previously unknown third form of carbon. He is survived by his wife, Deborah Smalley; two sons, Chad and Preston; a brother, Clayton; two sisters, Linda and Mary Jill; stepdaughters Eva and Allison; granddaughter Bridget; and a host of friends and relatives.
“We will miss Rick’s brilliance, commitment, energy, enthusiasm, and humanity,” Rice president David Leebron said. “He epitomized what we value at Rice: pathbreaking research, commitment to teaching, and contribution to the betterment of our world. In important ways, Rick helped build and shape the Rice University of today. His extraordinary scientific contributions, recognized with the Nobel Prize, will form the foundation of new technologies that will improve life for millions. His life’s work and his brave fight against a terrible disease were an inspiration to all.”
Colleagues and scientific leaders say it is hard to overestimate the role Smalley played in founding and fostering the development of nanotechnology, one of the most important and exciting new areas of scientific inquiry to arise in the past quarter century.
“Rick was incredibly creative and had the ability to make his creative vision a reality,” said Curl, University Professor Emeritus, the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences, and professor emeritus of chemistry. “His mind was sharp and incisive. Whenever I brought up some point that I thought he might have overlooked, I found that he had already thought of it and refuted it in his own mind. I have met many eminent scientists; I’ve never met anyone smarter, more creative, and more focused. His mind was like a searchlight bringing whatever it looked at into clarity.”
No one was better than Smalley himself at describing nanotechnology in plainspoken terms. “We are about to be able to build things that work on the smallest possible length scales, atom by atom, with the ultimate level of finesse,” Smalley told the U.S. House of Representatives while testifying in 1999 in support of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). “These little nanothings and the technology that assembles and manipulates them—nanotechnology—will revolutionize our industries and our lives.”
Nanotechnology draws its name from the nanometer, or one-billionth of a meter. Buckyballs measure one nanometer in diameter, and their discovery at Rice in 1985 frequently is cited as one of the earliest and most influential discoveries in the development of nanotechnology.
“In my view, this was a singular event in the history of nanotechnology,” said Neal Lane, senior fellow in science and technology at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. “It not only created the whole new field of fullerene chemistry, but it also immediately made feasible the notion of making things from the bottom up, just as physicist Richard Feynman predicted 50 years earlier.”
Fullerenes—the family of compounds that includes buckyballs and carbon nanotubes—remained the central focus of Smalley’s research until his death, and Smalley himself never shied from espousing the importance of fullerenes, particularly carbon nanotubes. “[Fullerene research] probably has transcendent importance in many areas of technology and, perhaps, in society,” Smalley told Small Times magazine in 2001. “It’s a heady thing to be involved. It’s almost like church.”
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