K. Eric Drexler, Ph.D
Chief Technical Advisor, Nanorex
Productive nanosystems and advanced problem-solving machines are quite different from each other, and neither will require the other for its achievement. Nonetheless, these technologies have similarities and share an important relationship. They are similar because each can, in advanced forms, provide capabilities far beyond those available today, and because each is a tool that can help to build better tools of the same sort. They are related in that each can help to advance the other. These characteristics describe feedback loops that will drive accelerating change.
Biography
K. Eric Drexler, Ph.D., is often described as the “father of nanotechnology.” His theoretical research in this field has been the basis for numerous journal articles and books including Engines of Creation and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, winner of the AAP Award for Most Outstanding Computer Science Book. In 1981, Drexler described an approach to implementing productive nanosystems in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This paper established fundamental principles of molecular design, protein engineering, and many areas of nanotechnology.
In 1986, Drexler founded the Foresight Nanotech Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to ensuring the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology, and served as Chairman until 2004. He is currently Chief Technical Advisor for Nanorex, a company developing computational modeling tools for design and analysis of productive nanosystems. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Molecular Nanotechnology, the first degree of its kind.