Richard smalley, buckminsterfullerene (the buckyball), and nanotubes

Richard E. Smalley, with funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), has conducted extensive research in cluster chemistry and in cold ion beam technology and is currently involved in research in nanotube single-crystal growth.

Smalley was born June 6, 1943, received a B.S. degree from the University of Michigan in 1965, and received a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1973. He began work at Rice University in 1976 and became a Professor in the Department of Physics in January 1990. In 1996, Dr. Smalley was appointed Director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) at Rice University. Current DOE-funded research by The Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology focuses on nanotube single crystal growth.

Richard Smalley has won many awards, including the 1992 E.O. Lawrence Award and the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shares with Robert F. Curl, Jr., of Rice University, Houston, TX, and Sir Harold W. Kroto of Great Britain "for their discovery of fullerenes". The Nobel award was given for the discovery of a new allotrope of carbon that consists of 60 carbon atoms in the shape of a soccer ball. The molecule was named Buckminsterfullerene and given the nickname "buckyball."

Robert f. Curl

University Professor Emeritus, Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Natural Sciences Emeritus, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus

Curl is best known as a member of the team that discovered the carbon cage compounds known as the fullerenes could be produced in good yield when elemental carbon vapor is allowed to condense under the right conditions.  The fullerenes are the only known form of elemental carbon.  Because of its maximum symmetry and high relative yield, icosahedral  C₆₀ known as buckminsterfullerene or familiarly as “bucky ball” is the most well known of the fullerenes.  For this discovery, Curl shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996 with Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley.

Over his long career, Curl has carried out research in a number of fields of physical chemistry involving both experiment and theory.  His research has primarily focused on studying the spectra, structure, and kinetics of small free radicals using microwave spectroscopy and tunable lasers. For the early microwave spectroscopy research on stable free radicals, he developed the theory of their fine and hyperfine structure. The purposes of tunable laser aspect of this work were to develop sensitive methods for detecting these radicals and following their concentration to obtain and analyze high resolution spectra of these species thereby providing definitive information about their electronic and geometrical structure, and to study the kinetics of their reactions. 

Deoxyribonucleic acid (dna)

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a moleculethat encodes thegeneticinstructions used in the development and functioning of all known livingorganismsand manyviruses. DNA is anucleic acid; alongsideproteinsandcarbohydrates, nucleic acids compose the three majormacromoleculesessential for all known forms oflife. Most DNA molecules consist of twobiopolymerstrands coiled around each other to form adouble helix. The two DNA strands are known aspolynucleotidessince they are composed ofsimpler unitscallednucleotides. Each nucleotide is composed of anitrogen-containingnucleobase—eitherguanine(G),adenine(A),thymine(T), orcytosine(C)—as well as amonosaccharidesugar calleddeoxyriboseand aphosphate group. The nucleotides are joined to one another in a chain bycovalent bondsbetween the sugar of one nucleotide and the phosphate of the next, resulting in an alternatingsugar-phosphate backbone. According tobase pairingrules (A with T and C with G),hydrogen bondsbind the nitrogenous bases of the two separate polynucleotide strands to make double-stranded DNA.

DNA is well-suited for biological informationstorage. The DNA backbone is resistant to cleavage, and both strands of the double-stranded structure store the same biological information. Biological information is replicated as the two strands are separated. A significant portion of DNA (more than 98% for humans) isnon-coding, meaning that these sections do not serve a function of encoding proteins.

The two strands of DNA run in opposite directions to each other and are therefore anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of nucleobases (informally,bases). It is the sequenceof these four nucleobases along the backbone that encodes biological information. Under thegenetic code,RNAstrands are translated to specify the sequence ofamino acidswithin proteins. These RNA strands are initially created using DNA strands as a template in a process calledtranscription.

Within cells, DNA is organized into long structures called chromosomes. Duringcell divisionthese chromosomes are duplicated in the process ofDNA replication, providing each cell its own complete set of chromosomes.Eukaryotic organisms(animals,plants,fungi, andprotists) store most of their DNA inside thecell nucleusand some of their DNA inorganelles, such asmitochondriaorchloroplasts. In contrast,prokaryotes(bacteriaandarchaea) store their DNA only in thecytoplasm. Within the chromosomes,chromatinproteins such ashistonescompact and organize DNA. These compact structures guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins, helping control which parts of the DNA are transcribed.

Scientists use DNA as a molecular tool to explore physical laws and theories, such as the ergodic theoremand the theory ofelasticity. The unique material properties of DNA have made it an attractive molecule for material scientists and engineers interested in micro- and nano-fabrication. Among notable advances in this field areDNA origamiand DNA-based hybrid materials.

The obsolete synonym "desoxyribonucleic acid" may occasionally be encountered, for example, in pre-1953 genetics.