The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience
The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience will be awarded for outstanding achievement in the science and application of the unique physical, chemical, and biological properties of atomic, molecular, macromolecular, and cellular structures and systems that are manifest in the nanometre scale, including molecular self-assembly, nanomaterials, nanoscale instrumentation, nanobiotechnology, macromolecular synthesis, molecular mechanics, and related topics.
Loius E. Brus and Sumio Iijima receive the first Kavli Prize in nanoscience from Crown Prince Haakon. (Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen)Nanoscience
Nanoscience and nanotechnology have captured the public imagination, but they are desperately hard to pin down. They seem to embrace everything from biomedicine to rocket science and computer technology. Some futurologists forecast that nanotechnology could bring doom to humankind, while others that it could be our savior. According to some accounts its impact won’t really be felt for decades; others point out that it has reached the marketplace already. In movies and novels such as Spiderman II and Prey, nanotechnology serves as a deus ex machina for whatever technological plot device is required, in contrast to which the commonly known consumer applications that today boast of their use of nanotech seem almost bathetic: sun creams and stain-resistant trousers.
So what’s the real deal? What are the nanoscientists up to, and should we fear or
welcome it?
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The 2008 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience
was awarded jointly to Louis E. Brus, of Columbia University, US, and Sumio Iijima, of Meijo University in Japan, for their respective discoveries of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes.
