“My interest in science had many roots. Some came from my mother as she...” — Richard Smalley Quote

My interest in science had many roots. Some came from my mother as she finished her B.A. degree studies in college while I was in my early teens.

The buckyball, with sixty carbon atoms, is the most symmetrical form the carbon atom can take. Carbon in its nature has a genius for assembling into buckyballs. The perfect nanotube, that is, the nanotube that the carbon atom naturally wants to make and makes most often, is exactly large enough that one buckyball can roll right down the center.

If we are ever to cross the 100-nano barrier in electronics, we need to develop nano structures that let electrons move through, as they do through wires and semiconductors. And these structures must survive in the real world of air, water, boiling temperatures.

Until late in life, I was never quite good enough for my father, and I suppose that is part of what drives me even now, well after his death in 1992.

Let's treasure our roots, even when we're far away.

You can't run from your roots.

I know where I come from and what my roots are.

I always consider myself a Hyderabadi; my roots are here.

My roots are Carnatic music. I think everything stems from that.