Dr. Richard E. Smalley of Rice University in Chemistry lab

Abstract

Richard E. Smalley, the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry since 1982 and Professor of Physics at Rice University since 1990, was affiliated with Rice since 1976. Smalley pioneered advances in the development of supersonic beam laser spectroscopy, super-cold pulsed beams, and laser-driven sources of free radicals, triplets, and metal and semiconductor cluster beams. He discovered and characterized fullerenes, the third elemental form of carbon after graphite and diamond, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996 along with Robert Curl. The Smalley Group at Rice continues his work by concentrating on single walled carbon nanotubes, a.k.a. "buckytubes". When made with molecular perfection these tubular fullerenes offer revolutionary electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties on the nanometer scale.