# Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology

Der Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology ist ein vom Foresight Institute in Palo Alto seit 1993 verliehener Preis für Nanotechnologie und Nanowissenschaften. Zuerst wurde er alle zwei Jahre vergeben, seit 1997 jährlich.
Er ist nach Richard Feynman benannt, dessen Vortrag There is plenty of room at the bottom von 1959 vielfach als visionäre Vorwegnahme der Nanotechnologie-Revolution gilt. Der Preis ist mit 5000 Dollar dotiert und wird in den Kategorien Experiment und Theorie vergeben.
Das 1986 von Eric Drexler gegründete Foresight Institute ist eine Non-profit-Organisation zur Förderung der Nanowissenschaften. Sie lobt auch einen großen Preis aus von je 250.000 Dollar für die erste Person, die einen Nanoroboter-Arm mit präziser Steuerung und einen 8-Bit-Addierer im Nanobereich realisiert.

## Preisträger

| Jahr | Preisträger | Institution | Begründung |
| 1993 | Charles Musgrave | California Institute of Technology | “for his work on modeling a hydrogen abstraction tool useful in nanotechnology” |
| 1995 | Nadrian C. Seeman | New York University | “for developing ways to construct three-dimensional structures, including cubes and more complex polyhedra, from synthesized DNA molecules” |

### Kategorie Experiment

| Jahr | Preisträger | Institution | Begründung |
| 1997 | James K. Gimzewski | IBM-Forschungslabor Rüschlikon bei Zürich | “for work using scanning probe microscopes to manipulate molecules” |
| 1997 | Reto Schlittler | IBM-Forschungslabor Rüschlikon bei Zürich | “for work using scanning probe microscopes to manipulate molecules” |
| 1997 | Christian Joachim | Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Toulouse (CEMES) | “for work using scanning probe microscopes to manipulate molecules” |
| 1998 | M. Reza Ghadiri | Scripps Research Institute | “for groundbreaking work in constructing molecular structures through the use of self-organization, the same forces used to assemble the molecular machine systems found in nature” |
| 1999 | Phaedon Avouris | Thomas J. Watson Research Center | “[for] the development of carbon nanotubes for potential computing device applications” |
| 2000 | Richard Stanley Williams | Hewlett Packard Laboratories | “for building a molecular switch, a major step toward their long-term goal of building entire memory chips that are just a hundred nanometers wide” |
| 2000 | Philip Kuekes | Hewlett Packard Laboratories | “for building a molecular switch, a major step toward their long-term goal of building entire memory chips that are just a hundred nanometers wide” |
| 2000 | James R. Heath | University of California, Los Angeles | “for building a molecular switch, a major step toward their long-term goal of building entire memory chips that are just a hundred nanometers wide” |
| 2001 | Charles M. Lieber | Harvard University | “for his pioneering experimental work in molecular nanotechnology which included seminal contributions to the synthesis and characterization of the unique physical properties of carbon nanotubes and nanowires” |
| 2002 | Chad A. Mirkin | Northwestern University | “for opening up new possibilities for the fabrication of molecular machine systems by selectively functionalizing nanoparticles and surfaces, particularly with DNA, enabling the self-assembly of new structures which move us closer to the goal of molecular manufacturing” |
| 2003 | Carlo Montemagno | University of California, Los Angeles | “for his pioneering research into methods of integrating single molecule biological motors with nano-scale silicon devices, which opens up new possibilities for nanomachines” |
| 2004 | Homme Hellinga | Duke University | “for his achievement in the engineering of atomically precise devices capable of precise manipulation of other molecular structures” |
| 2005 | Christian Schafmeister | University of Pittsburgh | “for his work in developing a novel technology synthesizing macromolecules of intermediate sizes (between 1000 and 10,000 Daltons) with designed shapes and functions” |
| 2006 | Erik Winfree | California Institute of Technology | “for their work demonstrating that DNA tiles can be designed to form crystalline nanotubes that exhibit a stiffness greater than the biological protein nanofilament actin, [and for having] established that algorithmic self-assembly could work well enough to generate non-trivial non-periodic patterns” |
| 2006 | Paul W. K. Rothemund | California Institute of Technology | “for their work demonstrating that DNA tiles can be designed to form crystalline nanotubes that exhibit a stiffness greater than the biological protein nanofilament actin, [and for having] established that algorithmic self-assembly could work well enough to generate non-trivial non-periodic patterns” |
| 2007 | Fraser Stoddart | University of California, Los Angeles | “[for having] pioneered the synthesis and assembly of unique active molecular machines for manufacturing into practical nanoscale devices” |
| 2008 | James Mitchell Tour | Rice University | “for the Synthesis of Nanocars... and other molecular machines [which] is providing critical insight in investigations of bottom-up molecular manufacturing” |
| 2009 | Yoshiaki Sugimoto | Universität Ōsaka | “in recognition of their pioneering experimental demonstrations of mechanosynthesis, specifically the use of atomic resolution dynamic force microscopy – also known as non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) – for vertical and lateral manipulation of single atoms on semiconductor surfaces” |
| 2009 | Masayuki Abe | Universität Ōsaka | “in recognition of their pioneering experimental demonstrations of mechanosynthesis, specifically the use of atomic resolution dynamic force microscopy – also known as non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) – for vertical and lateral manipulation of single atoms on semiconductor surfaces” |
| 2009 | Oscar Custance | National Institute for Materials Science, Japan | “in recognition of their pioneering experimental demonstrations of mechanosynthesis, specifically the use of atomic resolution dynamic force microscopy – also known as non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) – for vertical and lateral manipulation of single atoms on semiconductor surfaces” |
| 2010 | Masakazu Aono | International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA Center), National Institute for Materials Science in Japan | “in recognition of his pioneering and continuing work, including research into the manipulation of atoms, the multiprobe STM and AFM, the atomic switch, and single-molecule-level chemical control including ultradense molecular data storage and molecular wiring; and his inspiration of an entire generation of researchers who have made their own ground-breaking contributions to nanotechnology” |
| 2011 | Leonhard Grill | Fritz-Haber-Institut | “in recognition of his pioneering and continuing work on manipulating and structuring functional matter at the atomic scale” |
| 2012 | Gerhard Meyer | IBM Forschungslabor Zürich | “[for] their remarkable experiments advancing the frontiers of scanning probe microscopy. They were the first to produce images of molecular orbitals and charges detailed enough to identify the structure of individual molecules, as well as metal-molecule complexes. They have also been able to precisely make and break individual chemical bonds.” |
| 2012 | Leo Gross | IBM Forschungslabor Zürich | “[for] their remarkable experiments advancing the frontiers of scanning probe microscopy. They were the first to produce images of molecular orbitals and charges detailed enough to identify the structure of individual molecules, as well as metal-molecule complexes. They have also been able to precisely make and break individual chemical bonds.” |
| 2012 | Jascha Repp | IBM Forschungslabor Zürich | “[for] their remarkable experiments advancing the frontiers of scanning probe microscopy. They were the first to produce images of molecular orbitals and charges detailed enough to identify the structure of individual molecules, as well as metal-molecule complexes. They have also been able to precisely make and break individual chemical bonds.” |
| 2013 | David N. Beratan | Duke University | “The award recognizes Prof. Beratan's development of theoretical approaches to understand the function of complex molecular and macromolecular assemblies and machines.” |
| 2014 | Joseph W. Lyding | University of Illinois | “Development of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) technology” |
| 2015 | Michelle Y. Simmons | University of New South Wales | “Fabricating electronic devices with atomic-precision accuracy” |
| 2016 | Franz J. Giessibl | Universität Regensburg | “…pioneered major advancements in scanning probe microscopy for imaging and manipulating individual atoms, including the first achievement of atomic resolution by frequency modulation atomic force microscopy, inventing the qPlus sensor-based atomic force microscopy technique, and achieving subatomic resolution and the visualization of individual chemical bonds” |
| 2017 | William M. Shih | Harvard University | “…the total mastery of the design and synthesis of three dimensional DNA nanostructures. His work extended DNA origami from 2D to 3D - a breakthrough in the field. Shih entered DNA nanotechnology with a Nature article demonstrating the folding of a single strand of DNA; it was on the strength of this Nature paper that Shih got his position at Harvard. Thanks in large part to Shih's efforts over the last decade, programmable self-assembly of 3D DNA nanoshapes the size of a virus now is routine. His groundbreaking studies in Nature and Science that generalized DNA origami to solid three-dimensional structures were published in 2009.” |
| 2018 | Christopher Lutz | IBM Research | “For advances in manipulating atoms and small molecules on surfaces and employing them for data storage and computation.” |
| 2018 | Andreas Heinrich | IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience | “For advances in manipulating atoms and small molecules on surfaces and employing them for data storage and computation.” |
| 2019 | Lulu Qian | California Institute of Technology | |
| 2020 | Massimiliano Di Ventra | University of California, San Diego | |
| 2021 | Anne-Sophie Duwez | Université de Liège | |
| 2022 | Sergei V. Kalinin | University of Tennessee | |
| 2023 | James J. Collins | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| 2024 | Saw Wai Hla | Ohio University | |

### Kategorie Theorie

| Jahr | Preisträger | Institution | Begründung |
| 1997 | Charles Bauschlicher | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Stephen Barnard | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Creon Levit | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Glenn Deardorff | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Al Globus | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Jie Han | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Richard Jaffe | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Alessandra Ricca | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Marzio Rosi | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | Deepak Srivastava | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1997 | H. Thuemmel | NASA Ames Research Center | “for work in computational nanotechnology” |
| 1998 | Ralph Merkle | Zyvex | “for their computational modeling of molecular tools for atomically-precise chemical reactions” |
| 1998 | Stephen Walch | ELORET Corporation/NASA Ames Research Center | “for their computational modeling of molecular tools for atomically-precise chemical reactions” |
| 1999 | William A. Goddard III | California Institute of Technology | “for their work in modeling the operation of molecular machine designs” |
| 1999 | Tahir Cagin | California Institute of Technology | “for their work in modeling the operation of molecular machine designs” |
| 1999 | Yue Qi | California Institute of Technology | “for their work in modeling the operation of molecular machine designs” |
| 2000 | Uzi Landman | Georgia Institute of Technology | “for his pioneering work in computational materials science for nanostructures” |
| 2001 | Mark A. Ratner | Northwestern University | “[for being] a theorist whose work has made major contributions to the development and success of nanometer-scale electronic devices” |
| 2002 | Don Brenner | North Carolina State University | “for fundamental advances in our ability to model molecular machine systems, and for the design and analysis of components likely to be important in future molecular manufacturing systems” |
| 2003 | Marvin Cohen | University of California, Berkeley | “for their contributions to the understanding of the behavior of materials” |
| 2003 | Steven G. Louie | University of California, Berkeley | “for their contributions to the understanding of the behavior of materials” |
| 2004 | David Baker | University of Washington | “for their development of RosettaDesign, a program that has a high success rate in designing stable protein structures with a specified backbone folding structure” |
| 2004 | Brian Kuhlman | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | “for their development of RosettaDesign, a program that has a high success rate in designing stable protein structures with a specified backbone folding structure” |
| 2005 | Christian Joachim | CNRS | “for developing theoretical tools and establishing the principles for design of a wide variety of single molecular functional nanomachines” |
| 2006 | Erik Winfree | California Institute of Technology | “for their ‘Theory in Molecular Computation and Algorithmic Self-assembly’ research … based on their demonstration of methods for universal computation with DNA, including using DNA tiles to simulate cellular automata” |
| 2006 | Paul W. K. Rothemund | California Institute of Technology | “for their ‘Theory in Molecular Computation and Algorithmic Self-assembly’ research … based on their demonstration of methods for universal computation with DNA, including using DNA tiles to simulate cellular automata” |
| 2007 | David A. Leigh | University of Edinburgh | “[for] the design and synthesis of artificial molecular motors and machines from first principles and … the construction of molecular machine systems that function in the realm of Brownian motion” |
| 2008 | George C. Schatz | Northwestern University | “first for sophisticated modeling and optimization of the dip pen nanolithography method of nanofabrication, and second, for his explanation of plasmon effects in metallic nanodots” |
| 2009 | Robert A. Freitas Jr. | Institute for Molecular Manufacturing | “in recognition of his pioneering theoretical work in mechanosynthesis in which he proposed specific molecular tools and analyzed them using ab initio quantum chemistry to validate their ability to build complex molecular structures, [and] also his previous work in systems design of molecular machines, including replicating molecular manufacturing systems, which should eventually be able to make large atomically precise products economically, and the design of medical nanodevices, which should eventually revolutionize medicine” |
| 2010 | Gustavo E. Scuseria | Rice University | “for his development of quantum mechanical methods and computational programs that make it possible to carry out accurate theoretical predictions of molecules and solids, and their application to the chemical and electronic properties of carbon nanostructures” |
| 2011 | Raymond Astumian | University of Maine | “for his contributions to the understanding of Brownian motion and its use to power molecular motors and other functional mechanisms at the atomic scale” |
| 2012 | David Soloveichik | University of California, San Francisco | “for his general theory of DNA displacement cascades. He has shown that systems of DNA molecules can be designed with arbitrary dynamic behavior. In particular, he has shown that they are Turing-complete, and so can be made to run any general-purpose computer program.” |
| 2013 | Alexander K. Zettl | University of California, Berkeley | “The award recognizes Prof. Zettl’s exceptional work in the fabrication of nanoscale electromechanical systems (NEMS), spanning multiple decades and including carbon nanotube-based bearings, actuators, and sensors brought to fruition with cutting-edge nanoscale engineering.” |
| 2014 | Amanda S. Barnard | CSIRO | “Research for diamond nanoparticles” |
| 2015 | Markus J. Buehler | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | “Research enabling new multiscale paradigms in hierarchical systems” |
| 2016 | Bartosz A. Grzybowski | Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea | „research on computer-assisted organic synthesis“ |
| 2017 | Giovanni Zocchi | University of California, Los Angeles | “…for inventing a method (“nano-rheology”) for measuring stress – strain relations of soft nanoparticles with sub-Angstrom resolution and thereby discovering that enzyme mechanics is viscoelastic. Nano-rheology allows the exploration of conformational changes in enzymes from a materials science perspective. This includes the demonstration of nano-rheology as a biochemical assay. When enzymes bind small molecules, such as substrates or inhibitors, their mechanical susceptibility changes. This effect is easily detected by nano-rheology. The method can measure binding of small ligands, where existing label free methods such as the Biacore instrument fail. Nano-rheology thus emerges as a potential alternative to electronic and spin spectroscopies for certain bio-molecular assays.” |
| 2018 | O. Anatole von Lilienfeld | Universität Basel | “For introducing innovative new ways to accelerate QM quality predictions across materials compound space by multiple orders of magnitude.” |
| 2019 | Giulia Galli | University of Chicago | |
| 2020 | Hao Yan | Arizona State University | |
| 2021 | Kendall N. Houk | University of California, Los Angeles | |
| 2022 | James R. Chelikowsky | University of Texas | |
| 2023 | Alexandre Tkatchenko | Universität Luxemburg | |
| 2024 | Klaus-Robert Müller | Technische Universität Berlin | |