[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 74 (Monday, June 12, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1120-E1121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                       HON. JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 6, 2006

       The House in Committee of the Whole House of the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 5441) making 
     appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for 
     the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other 
     purposes:

  Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, one of the most important features of 
America's homeland security will be our ability to preserve America's 
leadership in high technology and scientific research. It has been my 
singular privilege to know and learn from one of the greatest 
scientists in our Nation, Dr. Richard Smalley of Rice University, and 
to represent him in the United States Congress. Today I want to honor 
him and his family and his colleagues at Rice University by celebrating 
his birthday, and giving thanks to God for bringing Rick into our 
lives. America lost him last year to cancer, yet the extraordinary 
research he was pursuing into carbon nanotubes and ``buckyballs'' will 
undoubtedly one day help lead us to a cure for cancer. Rick Smalley 
helped me understand that nanotechnology will change our lives as 
profoundly in the 21st century as oil and electricity changed our lives 
in the 20th century, and he lit a fire in me to do everything in my 
power to harness the immense human, medical, technological and 
financial capital of the Texas Medical Center into identifying and 
curing human diseases and making America truly energy independent by 
creating the Alliance for NanoHealth. The Alliance is my single highest 
priority for funding with our limited tax dollars in my work on the 
Appropriations Committee, and I am immensely proud that I could launch 
the Alliance with Rick and his colleagues at Rice and at all of the 
great institutions of the Texas Medical Center. The Alliance is 
thriving, especially now that it has the final key ingredient it was 
lacking, a dynamic and brilliant scientist as president, Dr. Mauro 
Ferrari. All of the pieces are in place for the Alliance to lead the 
world in identifying and curing cancers at the very earliest stages 
before they even become visible tumors. All of the pieces are in place 
for the Alliance to help make America energy independent of the Middle 
East and the rest of the world by using the single wall carbon 
nanotubes Dr. Smalley discovered, and so many other aspects of 
nanotechnology research and manufacturing that he pioneered. Rick 
Smalley will always inspire me and fill me with energy and enthusiasm 
to help America achieve the great dreams he saw for our future by 
harnessing nanotechnology. My hero Thomas Jefferson liked to say that 
he liked the dreams of the future better than the memories of the past, 
which was the way Rick Smalley lived his life. I will always honor Dr. 
Smalley by doing my very best to make his dreams of the future come 
true--an America that is energy independent, no longer reliant on 
fossil fuels, and where no one need suffer or die from cancer.

  It is appropriate and fitting, Mr. Chairman, that I add to the 
Congressional Record a few of the tributes offered by his family and 
friends at his memorial service.

                  Richard E. Smalley: A Legacy of Hope

                        (By Deborah S. Smalley)

       I have meditated often upon the gifts that Rick has left 
     us. And though time will tell the full story, I believe our 
     greatest inheritance from this amazing man is hope for the 
     future. Rick may well be remembered as the father of 
     nanotechnology; he was certainly its rock star. He had every 
     outstanding honor and award a chemist could earn, and his 
     knowledge of science and the world extended far beyond his 
     field. Who knows what applications for the betterment of 
     humanity will come from his revolutionary research and 
     inventions? His status as a Nobel Laureate was fascinating 
     enough to keep me involved in a forty-five minute attempt to 
     shake his hand during a conference at Rice University. I had 
     no idea that as we met, my life would be changed forever.
       I had taught high school science for 17 years, and sadly 
     enough, my world view offered the students little good news 
     for the long term future of man on earth. The problems we 
     were facing as a growing population would almost certainly 
     become insurmountable by the time we reached 10 billion 
     people. I had come outside the classroom looking for answers. 
     Dr. Richard Smalley shook my hand, and began to fill my mind 
     with a vision of a clean world with abundant energy. He had a 
     plan, and it gave hope. He opened the door to a new world 
     of plenty and set the rod by which we must measure our 
     efforts. He showed that there was a way; thereby placing 
     the burden for action squarely on our shoulders. We can 
     ignore it, but cannot plead ignorance. The prophet had 
     spoken.
       He told me that the means for gaining that future were just 
     out of reach, but doable. Who knows, perhaps this is the very 
     blessing we needed most. If he had done it for us, or if we 
     could shift the responsibility to someone else, then we would 
     miss the opportunity to demonstrate the magnificent qualities 
     deeply imbedded within us all; those beautiful giftings that 
     shine forth in times of great challenge.
       In order to bring forth the spirit that can pull us from 
     complacency and self-focus into the higher realm of courage, 
     honor, and altruism we need clear vision coupled with the 
     opportunity for action. Rick gave us all of that. By making 
     his solution inclusive, everyone became a player. None of us 
     can in good consciousness sit back assuming that someone more 
     talented, capable, or concerned will take care of it. There 
     is an enormous need to empower Americans so that we will take 
     charge of our circumstances and make a difference in this 
     world. Rick recognized energy as the one issue touching every 
     single one of us every day, and put out an alert for children 
     to ``be a scientist and save the world.'' I saw him give the 
     message to over seven hundred children, from sixth to twelfth 
     grades, at-risk to honors. They were so attentive, you could 
     hear a pin drop.
       A hopeless future instills in our youth a sense of urgency 
     to serve themselves; an attitude devastating to their 
     character and spirit. But when a great scientist, a trusted 
     son with a Nobel Prize says we can supply energy for 10 
     billion people, thereby making possible at least a reasonable 
     standard of living for all God's children, our faith is 
     stirred, and the impossible is slowly supplanted by the 
     possibilities. We need our children, all of them, to be 
     involved in the making of a whole new era. Science and 
     engineering does produce the technology that sets the stage 
     for building our world, and this vision of a world where we 
     can address shortages that lead to poverty, war, disease, and 
     ignorance through an abundance of clean energy, gives hope.
       When I finally got my turn to meet Dr. Richard Smalley, he 
     was clearly excited by my profession as a science teacher. I 
     still remember the intensity of his blue eyes as he told me 
     that our biggest problems were solvable, but that he needed 
     my students filled with a sense of mission and purpose to 
     create a new future, and then asked me if I thought they were 
     up for the challenge. In that moment, I fell irrevocably in 
     love--in love with the vision, in love with the passion, and 
     in love with the man who brought hope to our world, our 
     children and to me.
                                  ____


                 [From Science Magazine, Dec. 23, 2005]

                     Richard E. Smalley (1943-2005)

                 (By W. Wade Adams and Ray H. Baughman)

       Richard Errett Smalley, who died on 28 October 2005 after a 
     7-year fight with cancer, unselfishly used his stature and 
     wisdom to inspire a worldwide nanotechnology revolution. His 
     breakthroughs, his inexhaustible enthusiasm for exciting 
     young people about science, and his awakening the world to 
     possible nanotech solution to the energy crisis have left an 
     enduring legacy. In only 40 years of applying his powerful 
     intellect to science and technology, his work led to entirely 
     new types of materials and fields of study, revolutionary 
     apparatus for scientific investigations and 
     commercialization, and a deep understanding of behavior on 
     nano and molecular scales. Along the way he shared the 1996 
     Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry for codiscovering the soccer-
     ball shaped C60 fullerene molecule.
       Born in Akron, Ohio, on 6 June 1943, Smalley's interest in 
     science began in his early teens as he and his mother 
     collected single-cell organisms from a local pond and studied 
     them with a microscope. He learned from his father how to 
     build and fix mechanical and electrical equipment and from 
     his mother mechanical drawing, so that he could be more 
     systematic in design work. Many decades later, Rick's passion 
     for creative design was still evident on his office walls--
     diagrams showing his most recent improvements on equipment 
     for producing carbon nanotubes. Although his contributions to 
     physics and engineering were landmarks, chemistry was his 
     first love. The detailed periodic table of the elements 
     that he drew on rafters in the attic where he studied as a 
     youngster marked his early fascination with chemistry.
       He pursued this love, from undergraduate studies at Hope 
     College and the University of Michigan to the Shell Chemical 
     Company, where he worked as a quality control chemist in a 
     polypropylene plant. Rick said, ``These were fascinating 
     days, involving huge volumes of material, serious real-world 
     problems, with large financial consequences.'' He learned 
     about industrial-scale processes and the importance of 
     efficient catalysts, which were useful much later when he 
     initiated

[[Page E1121]]

     scale-up of carbon nanotube synthesis. After 4 years, he 
     resumed academic studies and earned his Ph.D. in 1973 from 
     Princeton University, focusing on the chemical physics of 
     condensed phase and molecular systems with thesis advisor 
     Elliott Bernstein.
       During postdoctoral study with Donald Levy and Lennard 
     Wharton of the University of Chicago, and later with Daniel 
     Auerbach, Rick helped develop a powerful technique: 
     supersonic beam laser spectroscopy. As a result, chemical 
     physicists can now drastically simplify spectroscopy of 
     complex molecules. Using the coldest part of expanding gas, 
     researchers could achieve temperatures below 1 K, thereby 
     freezing the rotations of moderate-sized molecules and 
     complexes. After joining the faculty of Rice University in 
     1976, Smalley worked together with Robert Curl to produce a 
     sequence of pioneering advances applicable for making and 
     characterizing very cold supersonic beams of large molecules, 
     radicals, and atomic clusters having precisely known numbers 
     of atoms.
       In August 1985, Smalley and Curl were joined by Harold 
     Kroto from the University of Sussex for a short summer 
     project to study interesting carbon cluster distributions 
     found by Andrew Kaldor at Exxon using an apparatus 
     constructed by Smalley's group. After a legendary late night 
     of taping together cardboard cutouts of hexagons and 
     pentagons on his kitchen table, using Kroto's insights into 
     the importance of five-carbon rings, Smalley presented the 
     carbon ``soccer ball'' as the only sensible way that 60 
     carbon atoms could be assembled to produce the observed 
     spectra. A new field of scientific investigation was thus 
     born, and then fueled by a seemingly continuous barrage of 
     exciting new results from both Rick's laboratory and others 
     across the world, which showed the diversity of carbon cage 
     types, how their production could be scaled up, the 
     diverse ways they can be modified, and their novel 
     physical and chemical properties.
       In 1993, Rick redirected much of his group's work to carbon 
     nanotubes, which can be viewed as theh cylindrical version of 
     carbon cage molecules, and Rick and his co-workers became 
     leaders in the field. His experimental skills were again 
     critical as his team developed the laser ablation and the 
     high-pressure carbon monoxide processes for making single-
     walled carbon nanotubes. Rapid worldwide scientific progress 
     was assisted by Rick's providing access to these high-quality 
     nanotubes, first through a non-profit effort at Rice 
     University, and then through the successful company he 
     founded in 1999, Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc.
       Many call Rick the grandfather of nanotechnology. He was 
     the most cited author in nanotechnology in the last decade, 
     and his pivotal scientific and technological breakthroughs 
     have inspired worldwide commercialization efforts. Because of 
     Rick's key role in creating the National Nanotechnology 
     Initiative, he was the only academic invited to the November 
     2003 Oval Office signing ceremony. His vision of using 
     nanotechnology to help solve the energy crisis and to improve 
     health through nanomedicine is motivating governments to fund 
     effective programs. Many will dedicate themselves to a goal 
     that Rick focused upon during his last 4 years of life: a 
     carbon nanotube quantum wire cable much stronger than steel 
     that would carry a current 10 times as high as that carried 
     by copper wire and weigh one-sixth as much.
       With his passing, the world lost a great intellect in 
     chemistry, physics, and engineering, but we also lost a great 
     advocate for science and technology and a great educator and 
     mentor. Robert Curl said that ``Rick was a visionary, and his 
     charisma and logic made those he worked with buy into the 
     vision. Rick convinced us that we could be better, stronger, 
     and take more chances if we just tried. I hope that we don't 
     forget--then his legacy . . . will make a lasting 
     transformative difference.'' In his humble way, Rick simply 
     said that science and life go on.
                                  ____


           Richard Smalley Memorial Remarks by Malcolm Gillis

       My first encounter with Rick Smalley came in 1993, when he 
     served on the President's Search Committee. Rick peppered me 
     with some really tough questions about the Free Electron 
     Laser, which I helped bring to Duke. From his comments, I 
     realized then and there that he was far more than an 
     outstanding chemist; rather his interests ranged deep and 
     wide into physics, mathematics and engineering. In the years 
     to come, I came to regard Rick as one of the world's paragons 
     of interdisciplinary understanding and insight. Rick's 
     scientific interests and questioning nature could never be 
     confined to any kind of disciplinary boundary.
       The full implications of the legacy left by Rick's work 
     will not be known for several decades. What we do know is 
     that in 2006, one does not open a copy of Science or Nature 
     or Journal of Applied Physics or Surface Science or 
     engineering journals or medical journals without finding at 
     least one article or review on nanoscience or nanotechnology. 
     No one can lay a better claim for responsibility for this 
     phenomenon than Rick Smalley and his collaborators here at 
     Rice and across the earth.
       And while Rick was pleased and even proud of the 
     snowballing applications of nanotechnology, he was always 
     careful to turn the spotlight on the work of other pioneers 
     in nanoscience and nanotechnology. It comes as no news to 
     anyone that Rick had a droll sense of humor lurking just 
     beneath his deep intellect. An example: The word ``nano'' has 
     its root in the ancient Greek word for dwarf. But Rick once 
     cracked that for many PIs all over the globe, the root for 
     nano came from a newer verb: ``to seek research grants.''
       Honors of all stripes came to Rick during his all-too-short 
     lifetime. However, he cared little for honors and very 
     greatly about nanotechnology's potential for resolving 
     pressing human problems in food supplies, energy 
     accessibilities, medical diagnosis and medical treatment. I 
     observed in the final year of his life, his primary 
     inspiration for his dogged, determined battle against disease 
     had first to do with his family and second his desire to 
     witness the fruition of a few more of the social benefits he 
     expected from innovative use of buckyballs, nanotubes and 
     other particles.
       We will all remember Rick for many, many things. We will 
     remember that in Fall 1996, when he and Bob Curl shared the 
     Nobel Prize with Kroto, both were teaching undergraduate 
     chemistry. I will remember him for his boundless energy, dry 
     wit and tolerance of the quirks of others.
       We admired him not only for his intellect but also for his 
     humanity. Speaking for myself, I have yet to adjust to the 
     absence of his presence. On several occasions since October, 
     I have reached for the phone to call Rick to ask him to help 
     me understand such things as the quantum hall effect or 
     quantum dots, only to realize that neither landlines nor cell 
     phones could reach that far.
       Ehamos de menos muchisimo, el Doctor Smalley. We miss you 
     greatly Dr. Smalley.

                          ____________________