Free Lecture: 'The Small Frontier' by Don Eigler (IBM Fellow, Almaden Research Center) September 11, 2008

Don Eigler is one of nanoscience's best known 'prophets', and a colourful character to boot. A physicist who pioneered the use of the scanning tunneling microscope to build structures using individual atoms, he will not only explain how one can assemble things out of atoms, in a kind of 'lego' approach; he will also be attempting a 'live demonstration', the details of which we have been asked to keep as a surprise for the audience.

TITLE: The Small Frontier
SPEAKER: Don Eigler (IBM Almaden)
TIME: 7.30 pm, Thursday, September 11th, 2008
PLACE: Fairmont Social Lounge, St. John's College

ABSTRACT: We live in a time of extraordinary scientific, medical and technological progress. When we take a close look at what makes this rapid progress possible we find a common enabling theme: mankind's ability to build ever smaller structures. How far can this era of miniaturization take us and what will be the consequences? We will begin to form partial answers to this question by examining the ultimate limit of miniaturization: building things atom-by-atom from the bottom up. We will see how this is done and explore its utility in allowing us to learn about the nanometer-scale world... the Small Frontier

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/media/eigler2.html

Official Website: http://pitp.physics.ubc.ca/quant_lect/