“What is the scariest thing?” science writer Philip Ball asked
at the opening of the Founders Day convocation on Thursday. “All writers of
thrillers and detective stories would agree: it's the thing we cannot see.”
Speaking on “Nanotechnology in Fact and Fiction,” Ball
went on to describe the promise of machines and structures at the molecular
scale.
Ball, a consulting editor of Nature who has published seven books and
a number of articles on popular science, received an honorary doctor of science
degree at the ceremony. He visited with a number of faculty and students and
spoke to several classes during his two-day visit to campus. He gave a public
lecture, “The Age of Molecular Engineering,” on Wednesday evening.
“New technologies make a good scenario for a thriller,” he
said at the Founders Day ceremony. “[But] I'm not losing any sleep over [it].”
“The number of components on a chip roughly doubles every
18 months,” he said. “But there are limits.”
So, we need new ways of making things smaller. Enter nanotechnology.
The first clear vision of nanotechnology came in 1959 from
Richard Feynman, who discussed the possibility of manipulating and controlling
things on a small scale. “It seemed an almost absurd challenge,” Ball said of
the reaction at the time.
Two decades later, Eric Drexler predicted that nanotechnology
would have medical applications for repairing damaged tissues, even spinal
column injuries, Ball said. “Since it operates on the scale of viruses, it offers
new possibilities.”
More recently, scientists at IBM developed a scanning
tunneling microscope (STM) capable of seeing and “pushing” individual atoms. “It feels its way over a surface with a very
fine needle, and uses it to drag atoms around,” Ball said. “You could fit the
entire Bible onto the surface of a human red blood cell.”
Nanotechnology is still a fledgling science, almost a
technological philosophy, he said, and it requires the same creativity of pioneers
like Edison working on a much smaller scale.
As with any new technology, nanotechnology brings with it
an ethical dimension that could spur a debate on all technology, he said. “The
first step is a fully informed public — that's the gap we have to close. “
Hawley Award
Herbert Taylor, an English teacher
at Hamburg (N.Y.) High School, received the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition
Award, He was nominated by his former student, Heather Lockrow '05.
Lockrow cited Taylor
in her nominating essay for being the “epitome of an educator – filled …with
knowledge, passion, care, and perhaps most importantly, respect for his
students.” She also wrote that Taylor
“enters the class each day with the willingness and desire to share the joys of
English language and literature” and that he “pushed people to do their best …
excel in and out of the classroom.”
Taylor
is a 1971 graduate of Rutgers University
and a 1973 graduate of Colgate University.
For 18 years, he served as chair of the English Department at Hamburg
High School. During his tenure, Taylor
has taught senior English and Advanced Placement English. Taylor
has been honored for his teaching by the University
of Richmond and SUNY-Fredonia.
The Gideon Hawley award is named
for the 1809 Union graduate who was a pioneer in education and teacher
development as well as New York's
first superintendent of public education. The award is presented annually to a
high school teacher who most influenced a current Union
College freshman or sophomore.
Lawrence J. Hollander, former dean
of engineering, presented the Hollander Convocation Musician Prize to pianist Tian
Tian '05, who played Fantasie-Impromptu
Op. 66 by Frédéric Chopin.
James E Underwood was installed as
the Chauncey Winters Professor of Political Science. He has been a Union
faculty member since 1963. He has been dean of the faculty, chair of the
political science department, chair of the social sciences division, director
of the General Education program, and advisor to many students in the College's
internship programs in Albany and Washington,
D.C. Chauncey Winters, a 1912 alumnus,
established the professorship that holds his name through a bequest in 1982.