James Kazimierz Gimzewski is a Scottish

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

descent who pioneered research on

electrical contact An electrical contact is an Electronic component, electrical circuit component found in electrical switches, relays, Electrical connector, connectors and circuit breakers. Each contact is a piece of electrically conductive material, typically meta ...

s with single

atom Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...

s and

molecule A molecule is a group of two or more atoms that are held together by Force, attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions that satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemi ...

s and

light emission This is a list of sources of light, the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light sources produce photons from another energy source, such as heat, chemical reactions, or conversion of mass or a different frequency of electromagnetic ener ...

using

scanning tunneling microscopy A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of scanning probe microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in ...

(STM).James K. Gimzewski (2014) "Building a Brain", a video lecture
YoutubeVimeo
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Education and early life

Gimzewski was born in Glasgow to Polish World War II war veteran Edmund Gimzewski. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1974 and PhD in 1977 from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Until February 2001, he was a group leader at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, where he was involved in nanoscale science since 1983. Currently, he is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

in the Department of

Chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

and

Biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, where he conducts research and advises graduate students in his PicoLab. He is also the faculty director of th
Nano & Pico Characterization
core lab at the

California NanoSystems Institute The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is an integrated research center operating jointly at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. Its missions are to foster interdisciplinary collaborations for discoveries in nanosystems and nanotechnology; train the ...

at UCLA.

Research

He pioneered research on electrical contact with single atoms and molecules, light emission and molecular imaging using STM. His accomplishments include the first STM-manipulation of molecules at

room temperature Room temperature, colloquially, denotes the range of air temperatures most people find comfortable indoors while dressed in typical clothing. Comfortable temperatures can be extended beyond this range depending on humidity, air circulation, and ...

, the realization of molecular

abacus An abacus ( abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a hand-operated calculating tool which was used from ancient times in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, until the adoption of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. A ...

using buckyballs (C₆₀), the discovery of single molecule rotors and the development of nanomechanical sensors based on nanotechnology, which explore the ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement. Recently , he discovered a new method to synthesize

carbon nanotube A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tube made of carbon with a diameter in the nanometre range ( nanoscale). They are one of the allotropes of carbon. Two broad classes of carbon nanotubes are recognized: * ''Single-walled carbon nanotubes'' (''S ...

s more regular in diameter and length. His current interests within CNSI are in the Nanoarchitectonics of molecular systems and molecular and biomolecular machines, in particular those with quantum mechanical possibilities for information processing. Recently , he has undertaken research in

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

, which he calls sonocytology. With UCLA graduate student Andrew Pelling, Gimzewski published sonocytology's debut report in the August 2004 issue of

Science magazine ''Science'' is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the world's top academic journals. It was first published in 1880, is currently circulated weekly and has a subscrib ...

. In the sonocytology studies, a Bioscope AFM (

atomic force microscope Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the diffr ...

) was modified to be able to detect the vibrations of the cell wall of a living cell. These vibrations, once amplified using computer software, created audible sound, and it was discovered that cancerous cells emit a slightly different sound than healthy cells do. Gimzewski and Pelling hope that sonocytology may someday have applications in early cancer detection and diagnosis.

Selected publications

* 2,195 citations (

Web of Science The Web of Science (WoS; previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a paid-access platform that provides (typically via the internet) access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedi ...

, October 2014) * 1,095 citations (

, October 2014)

Awards and honours

In 2001 Gimzewski became

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in United K ...

, and in 2009 was elected Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, the highest award in Britain for excellence in Science. He received the 1997

Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology The Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology is an award given by the Foresight Institute for significant advances in nanotechnology. Two prizes are awarded annually, in the categories of experimental and theoretical work. There is also a separate challe ...

, the 1997 The Discover Award for Emerging Fields, the 1998 “Wired 25” Award from ''Wired'' magazine and the Institute of Physics 2001

Duddell Medal and Prize The Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize (previously the Duddell Medal and Prize until 2008) is a prize awarded biannually by the Institute of Physics for distinguished contributions to the application of physics in an industrial, commercial or business ...

for his work in nanoscale science. He holds two

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

“Outstanding Innovation Awards”, and is a

Fellow of the Institute of Physics Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) is "the highest level of membership attainable" by physicists who are members of the Institute of Physics (IoP), "for those with a degree in physics or related subject (or equivalent knowledge gaine ...

and a

Chartered Physicist Chartered Physicist (CPhys) is a chartered status and a professional qualification for physicists awarded by the Institute of Physics. It is denoted by the postnominals "CPhys". Description Achieving chartered status in any profession denotes ...

. Gimzewski is a member of scientific boards of Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc. and Veeco Instruments.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gimzewski, James Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Scientists from Glasgow Molecular electronics Scottish people of Polish descent Alumni of the University of Strathclyde Fellows of the Institute of Physics Fellows of the Royal Society Scottish physicists University of California, Los Angeles faculty