James Tour wins Feynman Prize for nanocar work

By Margeux Clemmons     1/8/09 6:00pm

Molecule-sized cars complete with buckyball tires may bring new meaning to the term "compact car" thanks to chemistry professor James Tour, who has been awarded the 2008 Feynman Prize for his synthesis of the nanocar.The honor, which recognizes researchers who make significant contributions to the beneficial use of nanotechnology, is distributed by the California think tank Foresight Institute. The award was named after the late physicist Richard P. Feynman, who stressed that an atomic-level understanding of biology and chemistry would be crucial for further developments in the field.

Tour was one of four nominees worldwide and is Rice's first recipient of the award since the prize's inception in 1993.

"I wish I could say that I was absolutely overjoyed," Tour said. "But the people that really do this are the students that work in the lab. They have the ideas, and we make it work. But, I am thankful."

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The nanocar, which Tour says has gone through many models, is intended to demonstrate an understanding of motion and eventually to serve as a transportation device for building at the nano level.

"We build from the top down," Tour said. "The vision [of nanotechnology] is: Can we build from the bottom up like nature does? Once we understand motion, then we want to understand transport, and then assembly, so that in 100 years we can build buildings, not with sticks and bricks and mortar like we've been doing, but with these nanocars. This is just the embryonic stage."

Tour came to Rice from the University of South Carolina in 1999 after he met Rice chemistry professor and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, who would discover the buckyballs used as nanocar wheels, at a Foresight Institute conference. At the time, Rice had the world's first building devoted to nanotechnology and was a leader in the first contributions to the new field, Tour said.

Tour said that even with a nanotechnology program as strong as Rice's, part of the challenge in developing the new science is convincing established scientists that nanotechnology's vision is a feasible one and obtaining necessary resources.

"It took us years to make the nanocars," Tour said. "We bootlegged off of other projects until we had the funding."

Tour currently serves as the director of the Nanotechnology Laboratory, has published over 350 research works, and holds over 35 patents.

"[Nanotechnology is] fun in that so much of what you do you can publish, because it's all so new and can apply to almost anything," Tour said. "I love to come to work. I love to come to my office. I love to talk to my students. The biggest problem I have is that my mouth can't move fast enough, and there are all these things I have to leave unsaid.

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