Richard E Smalley

Richard E. Smalley was an American chemist, most well known for his work on fullerenes and carbon nanotubes. He was born on June 6, 1943, in Akron, Ohio, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Princeton University.

Smalley worked at a number of companies over the years, including companies like IBM and Rice University. He also worked with a number of notable coworkers, including Daniel T. Colbert and Jason H. Hafner.

Throughout his career, Smalley was a prolific inventor, amassing a total of 73 patents to his name. Two of his more recent inventions include:

1. Amplification of carbon nanotubes via seeded-growth methods: This invention pertains to processes for providing large quantities of carbon nanotubes of defined diameter and chirality, allowing for the large-scale production of precise populations of CNTs that can be optimized for a particular application.

2. Bulk cutting of carbon nanotubes using electron beam irradiation: This invention relates to a method for attaining short carbon nanotubes utilizing electron beam irradiation of a carbon nanotube sample. The method produces nanotubes with a distribution of lengths, with the majority of lengths shorter than 100 tun.

Smalley's contributions to the field of nanotechnology were significant, and he was recognized with numerous honors and awards throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996, which he shared with Robert Curl and Harold Kroto for their work in the discovery of fullerenes. Sadly, Smalley passed away on October 28, 2005, in Houston, Texas, leaving behind a legacy of innovation and discovery that continues to inspire scientists today.