Carbon has this genius of making a chemically stable, two-dimensional, one-atom-thick membrane in a three-dimensional world. And that, I believe, is going to be very important in the future of chemistry and technology in general. Richard Smalley Read Quote
Essentially, every technology you have ever heard of, where electrons move from here to there, has the potential to be revolutionized by the availability of molecular wires made up of carbon. Organic chemists will start building devices. Molecular electronics could become reality. Richard Smalley Read Quote
In a way, cancer is so simple and so natural. The older you get, this is just one of the things that happens as the clock ticks. Richard Smalley Read Quote
It turned out that the buckyball, the soccer ball, was something of a Rosetta stone of an infinite new class of molecules. Richard Smalley Read Quote
I know that, except for carbon, there would be no life in the universe. Except for this one atom, there would be no life. Well, why? When you think about it, it does get spooky. Encountering these molecules are spiritual experiences similar to what I remember in church as a child, only these are more serious. Richard Smalley Read Quote
The more we understand what happens in living cells, the more incredibly powerful you realize things can be when they work from the bottom up, by interaction of one molecule and another. Richard Smalley Read Quote
Nature – how, we don’t know – has technology that works in every living cell and that depends on every atom being precisely in the right spot. Enzymes are precise down to the last atom. They’re molecules. You put the last atom in, and it’s done. Nature does things with molecular perfection. Richard Smalley Read Quote
Administrators and scientists are excited by buckyballs for their own sake, and if they turn out to have practical applications, so much the better. Richard Smalley Read Quote
The buckyball, with sixty carbon atoms, is the most symmetrical form the carbon atom can take. Carbon in its nature has a genius for assembling into buckyballs. The perfect nanotube, that is, the nanotube that the carbon atom naturally wants to make and makes most often, is exactly large enough that one buckyball can roll right down the center. Richard Smalley Read Quote
If we are ever to cross the 100-nano barrier in electronics, we need to develop nano structures that let electrons move through, as they do through wires and semiconductors. And these structures must survive in the real world of air, water, boiling temperatures. Richard Smalley Read Quote
