Small Wonders • Big Future

"There's plenty of room at the bottom!"


So said the great physicist and Nobel prizewinner Richard Feynman more than fifty years ago, in a famous lecture on the possibilities of nanoscience — the science and technology of working with, and directly manipulating, atoms and molecules. Today, nano is everywhere: in our sunscreens, our medicine, even our phones.


Small Wonders • Big Future is a collection of interviews with the world-leading scientists who spoke at the 37th International Science School, ISS2013: Nanoscience, held at the University of Sydney in July 2013. Many of the speakers work in areas of nanoscience, from nanomedicine and gene silencing, to quantum computing and optical fibres. And some of our scientists work at very different scales — including cosmologist Professor Brian Schmidt, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011 for the discovery that the Universe is accelerating.


For over 50 years, the University of Sydney has hosted the Professor Harry Messel International Science Schools. Each ISS brings 150 of the world's top high school science students to Sydney for two weeks of amazing experiments and inspiring scientific talks. The ISS aims to inspire a lifelong passion for science, and to encourage these leaders of the future to consider careers in science, technology and engineering.


Interviews: Michael Roukes on nanoscience (Caltech), Peter Waterhouse on gene silencing (Sydney), Philip Russel  on nano photonics (Germany), Dr Karl Kruszelnicki on Great Moments in Science (Sydney), David Reilly on quantum systems (Sydney), Amanda Barnard on grapheme (CSIRO), Gerard Milburn on quantum computing (Queensland), Tanya Monro on optical fibres (Adelaide), Maria Kavallaris on nano medicine (UNSW), Brian Schmidt on the accelerating universe (ANU), and Ben Eggleton on the future of communication (Sydney)