James R. Heath

James R. Heath (*1962) is an American chemist and the Elizabeth W. Gilloon Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.

Early years

Heath graduated with a degree in Chemistry in 1984 from Baylor University in Texas. He completed his Ph.D. in Physics and Chemistry from Rice University in 1988.

Academic career

From 1988 to 1991, he was a Miller Research Fellow at the Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley. From 1991 to 1994, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Laboratory in Yorktown, New York. He joined the faculty at UCLA in 1994 and became Professor of Chemistry in 1997.

Research

Heath is known for publishing an architecture demonstration of molecular computers, or moletronics. In moletronics, single molecules serve as switches, "quantum wires" a few atoms thick serve as wiring, and the hardware is synthesized chemically from the bottom up. It was published in the summer of 1999 by Heath, J. Fraser Stoddart (Chemist at UCLA) and their collaborators in the journal "Science".

When Heath was at Rice University, he ran the experimental apparatus that generated the first C60 molecules and, ultimately, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the three senior members of the collaboration: Robert F. Curl and Richard E. Smalley of Rice University and Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex.

Awards and honours

Heath has received several awards and honours for his research. He was awarded the 2000 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology. He became a fellow of American Physical Society in 1999.

References

* C.P. Collier, E.W. Wong, M. Belohradsky, F.J. Raymo, J.F. Stoddart, P.J. Kuekes, R.S. Williams, and J.R. Heath, Electronically Configurable Molecular-Based Logic Gates, "Science", 285, 391 (1999).
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External links

* [http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/heath/ Personal webpage of James R. Heath]
* [http://www.its.caltech.edu/~heathgrp/ Research webpage of James R. Heath]