When they write the history of science in the 21st Century, the name Richard Feynman is going to be all over it, even though he died 12 years before the end of the 20th Century.

Feynman made an enormous mark on physics. He won a Nobel prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, translated Mayan hieroglyphics, and was the man who led an investigation to the true reason for NASA?s Challenger disaster in the 1980s.

Beyond all that, he was a teacher, a raconteur, a musician and a philosopher who did more to explain science and to channel its direction than perhaps any other human. Feynman was always concerned about the teaching of physics. During a visit to Brazil, for example, he evaluated the Brazilian educational system, writing an essay and giving a lecture about it at the end of the semester of 1950. He was a member of the council for evaluation of books of mathematics and physics for the primary and secondary public schools of California for two years. He also invigorated undergraduate physics education at Caltech, where his four years of lectures were edited and collected into the classic three-volume textbook The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which has become an inspiration for students of physics ever since. Feynman also published a number of popularisations of physics, including ?QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter?.

In 1959, he delivered a lecture at a talk in Caltech, entitled ?There?s Plenty of Room at the Bottom?, in which he argued that nature could be manipulated at a nanometer scale: ?The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of manoeuvring things atom by atom.? Thus was born nanotechnology, which in 1959 was little more than an idea in Feynman?s head, but which is now a reality, and is beginning to play a larger and larger role in our lives.

I should explain the scale. A nanometer is 10-9 meter, about as wide as ten hydrogen atoms. A white blood cell is about 10,000 nm in diameter.

The idea of building something, atom by atom, opens up an enormous range of possibilities. An enormous amount of effort is going into turning carbon molecules into diamonds, for example. A similar amount of effort is going into devising and constructing tools with which to remove an atom from a molecule, or to introduce an atom into a molecule.

In fact, it is helpful to be able to distinguish between nanoscience, which has been flourishing ever since Feynman?s lecture, and nanotechnology, which is the use of nanoscience to create products, which is very much in its infancy.

Some of the products of nanotechnology are already with us. Some of it is little more than curiosity ? improved sunscreens, tennis racquets, fishing rods, for example, or stain-resistant pants. Recently, researchers at the University of Manchester in England synthesised a nanoscale adhesive like the substance found on gecko footpads.

In science, we have seen the invention of scanning probe microscopy, in which a picture of an object is built up by scanning across it with a very fine tip. A good scanning force microscope is now substantially cheaper than a high resolution electron microscope, and much easier to use.

Once scientists master capturing and changing the configuration of a molecule, they should be able to create filtration systems that will remove impurities from the air, and remove particulate from the water we drink. Some of the most dramatic changes are expected in medicine. Scientists say they?re going to be able to create devices that will be able to travel through the circulatory system, cleaning the arteries as they go, for example. They say they are going to be able to create devices that will be able to track down and destroy cancer cells and tumours, or repair injured tissue at the site of the wound, even to the point of replacing missing limbs or damaged organs.

The exploration of space is going to be transformed. At the moment, it costs something like $10,000 per pound to transport people and gear into space. Nanotechnology will help by allowing us to deliver more machines of smaller size and greater functionality into space. Medical nanotechnology, they say, might even allow us to adapt our bodies for survival in space. That?s maybe a long way off, but it shows you how dramatically the horizon of possibility has been lifted by nanotechnology.

New, tougher forms of carbon are within our grasp. New composite materials that combine, for example, lightness and strength, are within our grasp. New forms of computer storage are available. New forms of drug delivery are available. What stands between the visualisation of these things and their availability for use is money for research and development.

According to the New Scientist, ?The National Science Foundation estimates that nanotechnology will create a $1 trillion (US) worldwide market by 2015, and governments worldwide are staking their claims. The US Congress has appropriated $2.36 billion over three years for nanotech R&D, while the European Union?s Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development has earmarked ?1.3 billion between 2002 and 2006.

?All told, public and private concerns will pour some $3 billion into nanotech this year, according to The Nanotech Report 2003, an investment overview compiled by the venture capital firm, Lux Capital, of New York. Some of that money will find its way into life science labs, where it will fund research in diagnostics and biosensing, tissue repair and regeneration, and therapeutics.?

The rub is that this is the first, major technology that is going to grow up from its infancy in an age when Luddites ? people who oppose technical change ? play such a big part on the world stage. I mentioned, in an article published earlier this year, an unusual conference in London. At this event, 40 members of the international scientific community were asked to list what significant discoveries and achievements would have been limited or prevented, if science at the time had been affected by the kind of caution that has been forced upon science today by people frightened of its implications.

The list they compiled was very long, too long to reproduce. But a few of the items they listed, chosen more or less at random, were these: The aeroplane, antibiotics, aspirin, blood transfusions, CAT scans, the discovery of DNA, electric light bulbs, fire, the internal combustion engine, the internet, the jet engine, knives and vaccines for measles, polio, smallpox, rabies and other diseases. Nuclear power, oil, open-heart surgery, organ transplants, pasteurisation, penicillin, the Periodic table, Quantum mechanics, radar, railways, space exploration, steam power, the telephone, the wheel and X-rays.

Perhaps it wouldn?t be so bad if these people were simply frightened of the implications of science, and anxious to communicate their concern. But that?s not their game at all. What they want to do is control science, and direct it as they see fit.

Will nanotechnology survive their finger-wagging? I?m taking a little heart from the fact that Luddites by definition aren?t altogether reasonable people. James John Bell, writer/director and network administrator for the environmental communications firm, Sustain, recently wrote this paragraph: ?Nature and technology are not just evolving; they are competing and combining with one another. Ultimately they will become one. We hear reports daily about these new technologies and new creations, while shreds of the ongoing biological collapse surface here and there, anything becomes possible. Beware the dragons.?

Not exactly a frightening fellow, is he?

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