Dallas has plenty of rich white men capable of getting on a Forbes list of richest white men in America; see? So it's nice to see Dallas--fine, Richardson--being recognized for the accumulation of knowledge, rather than the accumulation of wealth. (I say this, of course, as someone who's acquired neither, which is my Rick Perry-given right.)
In the December issue of Scientific American, which hits stands November 21, three nanotechnologists from the University of Texas at Dallas will be been named to the 2006 Scientific American 50, which, it says here, is a "a prestigious list published annually by the respected magazine that recognizes outstanding contributions in the fields of science and technology during the past year." Those three, named by the magazine this morning, are Dr. Ray Baughman, Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry and director of the NanoTech Institute at UTD, and colleagues Dr. Mei Zhang and Dr. Shaoli Fang, both of whom are research scientists. They're being feted for "their research contributions to the development of nanotube yarns and sheets made of carbon nanotubes, cylinders of carbon molecules with remarkable properties that are over ten-thousand times smaller in width than a human hair."
If I had any idea what that meant, I'd be very impressed. OK, I am impressed. But I'm going to hell, so whatever. --Robert Wilonsky
