VOICES: RICHARD SMALLEY

TITLE
Professor of chemistry and physics, Rice University. 55.

CONTRIBUTIONS
After sharing the 1996 Nobel Prize for discovering carbon 60 molecules, or ''buckyballs,'' he's working with elongated forms called carbon nanotubes. These could be the basis for chips with circuits the size of single molecules.

IN HIS WORDS
''Nature creates enzymes that are precise down to the last atom. But she doesn't make buckytubes. Maybe we are nature's way of making these.''