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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3423476
i don't know why, but I feel pretty bad about this one.
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I'm in a bit of a two-state mind over this.
He did discover buckyballs, hugely important to the now booming nanotech, which gave us nanotubes, and all that exciting stuff...
But later in life, he went out of his way to discredit research into nanomanufacturing, the atom-by atom building of arbitrary structures, the type proposed by Drexler et al.... , Saying it was absolutely impossible. Even when proved wrong in some aspects by experiments, he kept scoffing, even waving with his Nobel prize as 'argument'....
Much heated, and irate debates as a result, and he, 'godfather of nanotech' had a voice heard where it counts (funding, policy)
IMO, he set back research in nanomanufacturing by years.
A brilliant mind, for sure, but...
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i'm of the opinion he wasn't to impressed with the way the Foresight folks went about things or their 'collective' agreement of how to deal with molecular manufacturing . . . .
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Actually, I'd say Smalley increased regular nanotech funding as oppossed to the molecular manufacturing funding; i'd say this was a good thing because really as has been shown, the cost of developing molecular manufacturing as Richard Feynman and Drexler concieved it has turned out to be more than any government in the world would currently fund(although, the price is rapidly falling). It is not like they would have funded that stuff anyways - better to fund a bunch of 'enabling' technologies than molecular manufacturing directly.
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