'Nanocar' Inventor Wins Feynman Prize

James Tour, the inventor of the nanocar at Rice University, has been awarded the 2008 Feynman Prize for experimental nanotechnology by the Foresight Institute, a California think tank dedicated to the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology. Tour was one of four nominees for the prize, specifically for his work on the synthesis of nanocars, molecule-sized vehicles with buckyball wheels that served as an experiment to explore the possibility of building working machines at such a scale. The prize, first awarded in 1993, is named for the late physicist Richard P. Feynman, who introduced the concept of nanotechnology in a famous talk in 1959. The institute awarded a second Feynman Prize for theory in nanotechnology to George Schatz of Northwestern University for his contributions to nanofabrication and sensing.