© Copyright 2007 by the American Chemical Society
VOLUME 111, NUMBER 48, DECEMBER 6, 2007
Biography of Richard Errett Smalley Richard Errett Smalley was born in Akron, Ohio on June 6, 1943. He was the youngest of four children. In his autobiography, Rick reports a remarkably serene childhood with a devoted mother, who did much to broaden his outlook and interest in science. It was from his mother that Rick first learned of Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Darwin. Together they collected pond water and looked at the single cell organisms through a microscope that his father had given her. Rick also spent many hours designing, building, and tinkering with things in his father’s basement workshop. This was probably the best possible foundation for a career in experimental physical chemistry. Sputnik was launched about the time that Rick entered high school. This severe jolt to the American ego and the corresponding realization that science and technology were essential to the national interest meant that science would assume greater importance to the country. Rick claimed that despite his love of science and experimentation, he had been an erratic student until then. Now he could see that the field of his interest was going to blossom and grow. Everything clicked into place, and he became passionate about a career in science. The question
“What branch of science?” was answered by the example of his maternal aunt, Sara Jane Rhoads, who was a chemistry professor at the University of Wyoming. Her example led him to focus on a career in chemistry. After graduating from high school, Rick attended Hope College for 2 years before transferring to the University of Michigan to complete his Bachelor’s degree. After graduation, Smalley did not go directly to graduate school, choosing instead to work in industry at the Shell polypropylene plant in Woodbury, New Jersey. After about 2 years at Shell, he felt ready for graduate study. However, just as he was at the point of making a decision about graduate school, draft deferments for graduate students were ended while his industrial deferment continued. When industrial deferments subsequently also ended, Rick decided he might as well go to graduate school. He applied and was accepted into the Ph.D. program in Chemistry at Princeton. Before long, through, the draft board reclassified him 1A and he passed the preinduction physical on his way to military service. However, shortly thereafter Rick’s wife, Judy, became pregnant. This meant a reclassification that kept him out of the draft and let him enter graduate school in the Fall of
10.1021/jp0748922 CCC: $37.00 © 2007 American Chemical Society Published on Web 11/29/2007
17654 J. Phys. Chem. C, Vol. 111, No. 48, 2007 1969. Once at Princeton, Rick became one of the first graduate students to join the group of Elliot Bernstein. His thesis research focused on the electronic spectroscopy of 1,3,5-triazine in lowtemperature crystals. In the summer of 1973, Smalley moved to the University of Chicago for postdoctoral research with Donald Levy. However, he still had one final requirement at Princeton to receive his Ph.D.: defending three original research proposals. In one of these, Rick proposed to simplify the complex electronic spectrum of NO2 by supersonic expansion cooling of the sample. He discussed this with Levy in Chicago. The proposal seemed to have serious technical pitfalls, including dimerization of the NO2 and insufficient cooling. However, Levy knew that his colleague Lennard Wharton had been working on molecular beam systems and thought it would be worthwhile to talk with him. They soon learned that Wharton had achieved a temperature of 3 K in the expansion of Ar. So by seeding NO2 in argon at low concentration, they could hope to get very effective cooling while avoiding dimerization, thus in principle solving both problems at once. Rick set to work and quickly turned their plan into experimental reality. This breakthrough opened an exciting period in physical chemistry in which lasers and supersonic expansion cooling were combined in a wide variety of experiments to probe the spectroscopy and dynamics of isolated molecules and complexes. Rick interviewed for an assistant professor position at Rice University in early 1976. His seminar describing the fantastic work he did as a postdoctoral at Chicago was so impressive that the Rice chemistry department took the unprecedented step of offering him the job on the spot. Rick accepted and got his laboratory at Rice set up and running in an incredibly short time. As great results began streaming out of his lab, it rapidly became clear that Rick was a truly extraordinary scientist. By the summer of 1982, Rick had been promoted to full professor with a chair as the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, a position that he continued to hold for the rest of his life. In his first few years at Rice, Rick had invented a technique for investigating intramolecular vibrational relaxation through resolved fluorescence measurements on molecules cooled by supersonic expansion. He also had developed a means for studying the spectra of reactive free radicals produced by flash photolysis and cooled by supersonic expansion. On top of that, Rick had built a remarkable apparatus that produced molecular clusters of refractory materials, cooled them by supersonic expansion, and measured their electronic spectra using resonant multiphoton ionization combined with mass spectrometry. This apparatus combining cluster beam formation and mass spectrometry was central to the famous 1985 discovery of the fullerenes in a collaboration with Bob Curl and Harry Kroto and Rick’s graduate students Sean O’Brien and Jim Heath. The essence of this work is that there are certain conditions under which these molecular cages of pure carbon form in reasonable yields through the condensation of carbon vapor. This finding inspired the team of Kraetschmer, Lamb, Fostiropoulos, and Huffman to find a simple way of making fullerenes in 1990, thereby opening a whole new field of carbon chemistry and launching a furious wave of worldwide research activity that is still expanding. By 1990, Rick had realized that the conceptual extension of the C60 shape into C70 and then into C80 could be generalized to give tubular fullerenes with very high aspect ratios. Carbon structures of this type should be extremely strong because of their end-to-end covalent bonding network. When calculations
Editorials on the electrical properties of such tubes predicted that some should behave as semiconductors while others would conduct electrons ballistically, he became even more interested in carbon nanotubes but had no way of making them. The simultaneous independent reports in 1993 by researchers at NEC and at IBM Almaden of the synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), i.e., long segments of these extended fullerenes, electrified Rick. He decided to devote all his efforts to finding bulk methods for synthesizing, characterizing, and exploiting these “buckytubes.” This passion remained for the rest of his life. Rick had big dreams for carbon nanotubes. He wanted to use them to make ultra-strong cables that could enable construction of an elevator to space. He hoped to selectively grow the tube types that are ballistic conductors of electrons, envisioning their use in a global grid of power lines that would efficiently connect electricity users to dispersed networks of power sources. However, first Rick had to make tubes. It was obvious from the first reports that metal catalysts were essential for their synthesis. In order to learn more about nanotube growth under reasonably controllable conditions, Rick invented a way to produce tubes by laser-vaporizing graphite impregnated with catalyst in a stable high-temperature environment. Although this laser-oven process was not scalable for mass production, it produced excellent SWNTs in high yields and provided the nanotube research community with a crucial source of high quality samples. In an effort to increase production, Rick went on to invent the “HiPco” process, in which carbon monoxide is disproportionated into C and CO2 at high pressure and temperature in the presence of iron nanoparticles formed in situ from iron carbonyl. This important process is now used for commercial production of SWNTs. As can be seen from many of the papers in this issue, research on SWNTs continues to flourish. Although Rick’s dreams of ultra-strong cables and super high tension lines have not yet been realized, SWNTs are starting to find practical applications that exploit their remarkable physical properties. After he received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry as codiscoverer of the fullerenes, Rick Smalley began to leverage his new celebrity to advocate governmental support of research in nanoscale science and technology. He testified before Congress and pushed for presidential support through Neal Lane, President Clinton’s Science Advisor. These efforts culminated in the early 2000s with the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a program that has supported much of the work in this area through a variety of government agencies. Smalley’s vision and his passion to influence history extended well beyond the creation of NNI. In the mid-1990’s, he thought deeply about the many challenges facing humanity arising from overpopulation of the earth. He fastened upon energy as the one resource that, if it were abundant and cheap, could do the most to alleviate the host of problems we face. For example, it could provide fresh water through desalination and extra food through cheap production of fertilizers. Fossil fuels were clearly not the answer because of their finite supply and the global warming caused by their combustion. Instead, Rick deduced that the solution hinged on solar energy, the only source abundant enough to meet growing needs. Although substantial technical challenges remained in developing methods for economical large-scale harvesting, efficient transmission, and local storage of the solar-derived energy, Rick was convinced that these could be overcome through basic and applied research. Rick did everything he could to mobilize society to solve the coming energy crisis, making dozens of
Editorials compelling, passionate presentations promoting his energy vision to a wide range of audiences. He had great faith in the power of science to solve societal problems and exhorted students to “Be a scientist and save the world”. Even during the period that Rick devoted much of his efforts to public outreach and science policy advocacy, he remained deeply committed to directing research, teaching, and mentoring his students. His remarkable accomplishments arose from a unique combination of talents, including tremendous intellectual power and curiosity, fierce determination, great personal charm
J. Phys. Chem. C, Vol. 111, No. 48, 2007 17655 and charisma, and wonderful communication skills. He was fearless in pursuing research and in promoting the causes he cared about. For the last 7 years of his life, Rick Smalley did all of this while fighting leukemia. Sadly, he lost that battle, one of the very few he ever lost, on October 28, 2005.
Robert F. Curl R. Bruce Weisman Guest Editors
