Abstract
In the spring of 2002, the world's most productive young scientist was a 31-year-old physicist at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the US. With eight papers published in Nature and Science in 2001 alone, Jan Hendrik Schön was emerging with breathtaking speed as a star researcher in physics, materials science and nanotechnology. His research was based on an unrivalled ability to transform the properties of materials by the application of an electric field. He built high-performance transistors made not from silicon but from carbonbased materials. He coaxed materials into superconductors, which have an almost magical ability to conduct electricity without resistance. He described the world's first organic electrical laser, and the first ever light-emitting transistor. He even claimed to have built the world's smallest transistor by wiring up a single molecule. It was a dazzling nanotechnology triumph.