Edge: Intellectual Capital

NZ’s nano-tech Nobel laureate Alan MacDiarmid has been appointed to the newly created James Von Ehr Distinguished Chair in Science and Technology at The University of Texas at Dallas. “Alan MacDiarmid’s move to Dallas is an important development for the technology business sector of North Texas”. Patron Von Ehr: “His presence here increases the intellectual capital of the region and creates intriguing possibilities for innovative collaborative work.” MacDiarmid shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa for their discovery that plastics can be made electrically conductive; thus creating the field of conducting polymers. MacDiarmid on the pioneering scientific spirit and exploring the unknown: “If five years from now we are doing what we are planning to do now, then something is wrong.” In May MacDiarmid was made a fellow of the Royal Society. Portrait above by Marianne Muggeridge.