News Summary

• Three U.S. scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their work on quantum dots — particles just a few atoms in diameter that can release bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging..
• The practical applications of quantum dots, like creating the colors in flat-screen TVs, are something he was hoping for when he started the work decades ago, he said.“Basic research is extremely hard to predict exactly how it’s going to work out,” Brus said..
• The advance notice apparently came from a news release sent out early by mistake.Quantum dots are tiny inorganic particles that glow a range of colors from red to blue when exposed to light..
• But it wasn’t until several decades later that scientists could manufacture quantum dots in a lab.In the 1980s, Ekimov, 78, and Brus, 80, honed the theory and developed early laboratory techniques for creating particles that emit varying colors by adjusting sizes..
• Bawendi said he was not thinking about the possible applications of his work when he started researching quantum dots..
• And that’s what drives scientists and academic scientists to do what they do,” he said.Brus, a professor emeritus at Columbia, said he didn’t pick up the phone when the early morning call came from the Swedish academy to notify him..