Richard Errett Smalley

Richard Errett Smalley, Nobel laureate and a leading voice for nanoscale science and technology, died of leukemia on 28 October 2005 in Houston, Texas.

Born in Akron, Ohio, on 6 June 1943, Rick credited his early interest in science to his parents and extended family, and to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. He spent two years at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and completed his BS in chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1965. After a four-year stint in industry with the Shell Chemical Co, Rick undertook graduate studies in chemistry at Princeton University under Elliot Bernstein. He received his PhD in 1973 with a dissertation entitled “The Lower Electronic States of 1,3,5 Symtriazine.”

For his postdoctoral research with Donald Levy at the University of Chicago, Rick switched from working with condensed matter systems to high-resolution gas-phase spectroscopy. Spectra for polyatomic molecules, even small ones, are highly complicated by molecular rotation. While preparing for his final oral exams at Princeton, however, Rick had read a paper in which authors Yuan Lee and Stuart Rice pointed out that the supersonic expansions used to produce molecular beams could cool molecular rotation, and he immediately realized the significance of that comment to his spectroscopy research. In 1974, Rick, Levy, and colleague Lennard Wharton published the first rotationally cooled fluorescence excitation spectrum of NO₂, and they went on to develop supersonic molecular-beam spectroscopy. Supersonic jet cooling has allowed the detailed analyses of the structure and dynamics of polyatomic molecular systems.

In 1976 Rick accepted an assistant professor position at Rice University in Houston. There he demonstrated an amazing ability to imagine and then construct large, complex machines for his research. An example is his cluster-beam apparatus called AP2, pictured here. With that machine he developed a method to send pulsed lasers into a supersonic nozzle to generate vaporized materials that would cool and emerge as clusters. The clusters could be studied spectroscopically, by mass spectrometry, or simultaneously by both. Rick’s method enabled the investigation of metal and semiconductor nanoparticle ions with precisely known numbers of atoms. Clearly, his influence on nanoscale science began well in its prehistory.

Rick rapidly became an intellectual force at Rice and rose quickly in the academic ranks. He was appointed the Gene and Norman Hackerman Chair of Chemistry in 1982, a professor of physics in 1990, and University Professor in 2002. A member and supporter of the Rice Quantum Institute, he served as its director from 1986 to 1996. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990.

In 1985, Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex and Robert Curl Jr, a colleague at Rice, convinced Rick to study carbon in AP2. Through those experiments, Rick and his team, including graduate students James Heath and Sean O’Brien, discovered the fullerenes, a new elemental form of carbon. After the initial publications, he and his coworkers continued to gather evidence for the “fullerene hypothesis” through a series of elegant cluster-beam experiments. In 1990 Donald Huffman and Wolfgang Krätschmer generated macroscopic fullerene samples in a carbon-arc discharge; analysis of bulk samples by diffraction and nuclear magnetic resonance removed any remaining doubt about the existence of the new class of materials, and fullerene research quickly became a major field of study. Rick shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Curl and Kroto for the discovery of the fullerenes.

Sumio Iijima’s report of multi-walled tubular carbon structures in 1991 fueled speculations that single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), which are essentially extended fullerenes, might exist. Fascinating theoretical predictions of the properties of SWNTs soon emerged and drew Rick’s interest. Such tubes should be the stiffest and strongest known material, act as metals or semiconductors depending on their structure, and perhaps represent a route to the ultimate miniaturization of electronic devices. In June 1993, Iijima at NEC and Don Bethune at IBM’s Almaden Research Center simultaneously reported the experimental observation of SWNTs. Yet the SWNTs suffered a production problem similar to that of the fullerenes: Samples of sufficient yield and purity were not available to test the theoretical predictions.

Seeing the vast potential of SWNTs for basic and applied research, Rick focused his efforts entirely on them. By the mid-1990s, his motto was, “If it ain’t tubes, we don’t do it.” In 1996 his lab developed a laser-vaporization method to produce SWNTs from graphite rods doped with cobalt and nickel. The purity of the laser-vaporized material, and his willingness to make it widely available to the research community, enabled the confirmation of many of the electronic-structure predictions. However, Rick knew that laser vaporization was not amenable to the large-scale production of nanotubes needed for their applications. Therefore, he also developed a gas-phase catalytic route based on iron and high-pressure carbon monoxide, which led him back into industry and his love for big machines.

In addition to synthesis, Rick worked on many aspects of nanotubes, including their mechanical, magnetic, and electronic properties; their use as field emitters and probes; and their functionalization, purification, and formation into fibers and membranes. A significant advance occurred in 2002 with the formation of suspensions of well-isolated nanotubes in surfactants. With semiconducting nanotubes now free of the quenching effects of metallic nanotubes, Rick observed bandgap fluorescence with Bruce Weisman, his colleague at Rice.

With his work in nanoscale science and technology, Rick continued to shape research directions at Rice and beyond. Rice established the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology in 1996 with Rick as its founding director. In his honor, the center was recently renamed the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

Rick was a visionary in all of his endeavors. The detailed minutiae of a group meeting would often give way to a hypnotic description of where a project was headed and why it was important. Armed with such dedicated vision, he crossed the globe to speak on the importance of energy production and of training a scientific workforce, and how nanoscale science and technology could help accomplish those goals. His dramatic 1999 testimony before the US House of Representatives was a key factor in the establishment of the multi-agency National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2000.

Rick was incredibly driven in all his efforts and refused to give up on a problem until he solved it or proved it could not be solved. Such diligence was a key factor in his success and was an inspiration to his students and collaborators.