Richard Phillips Feynman and nanotechnology concept

Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11th 1918-Frebruary 15, 1988) was born in New York. He was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of super cooled helium.  

He grew up in Far Rockaway, where even as a youngster he established a reputation for his unbridled curiosity his sense or humor and a talent for mathematics. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1942.

In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology.

His dinner talk on December 29th, 1959 for the American Physical Society meeting at Caltech seems to have started it all, or at least made the idea tangible.

His famous lecture was entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" and postulated the idea of nanotechnology.

Feynman considered the possibility of direct manipulation of individual atoms and controlling things on a staggeringly small scale.  In nanotechnology, ‘small scale’ means at or around the scale of a nanometer, where one nanometer is a billionth of a meter or about 1/80,000 the width of a human hair.

It was not until November 1979 – 20 years after Feynman’s talk – that ‘Plenty of Room’ was respected as a blueprint for what later called nanotechnology.

The Foresight nanotech Institute created two prizes named after Richard Phillips Feynman, acknowledging his role in launching the field of nanotechnology.
Richard Phillips Feynman and nanotechnology concept

John Desmond Bernal (1901 – 71)

John Desmond Bernal (1901 – 71)
John Desmond Bernal, British physicist. His pioneering work in the field of X-ray crystallography enabled the structure of many complex molecules to be elucidated.

Bernal came from an Irish farming family. Brought up as a Catholic, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Cambridge, where he abandoned Catholicism and became (1923) an active member of the Communist Party.

After Cambridge, Bernal spent four years at the Royal Institution in London learning the practical details of X-ray crystallography from Sir William Bragg. When he returned to Cambridge in 1927 he planned a research program to reveal the complete three-dimensional structure of complex molecules, including those found exclusively in living organisms, by the techniques of X-ray crystallography.

In 1933 Bernal succeeded in obtaining photographs of single crystal proteins and went on to study the tobacco mosaic virus. It was not, however, Bernal’s own achievements in crystallography, as much as those of his pupils and colleagues, such as Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz, that brought about the revolution in biochemistry and launched the subject of molecular biology.

In 1937 Bernal was appointed professor of physics at Birkbeck College, London. His attempts to develop the department were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Despite his known membership of the Communist party and against the advice of the security forces, Bernal spent much of the war as adviser to Earl Mountbatten.

In 1945 he returned to Birkbeck College and in 1963 was appointed to a chair of crystallography. In the same year he suffered a stroke and although he continued to work for some time, a second and more severe stroke in 1965 paralyzed him down one side and virtually ended Bernal’s scientific life. His books include The Social Function of Science (1939), Science In History (1958), and the Origin of Life (1967).
John Desmond Bernal (1901 – 71)