Ralph Merkle
Director, Alcor Foundation
Ralph Merkle co-invented public key cryptography, for which he received the ACM Kanellakis Award, the IEEE Kobayashi Award, and the 2000 RSA Award in Mathematics. He is directly involved in the research of molecular manufacturing, also called nanotechnology or molecular nanotechnology and serves as a director of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. The central objective of molecular nanotechnology is the design, modeling, and manufacture of systems that can inexpensively fabricate most products that can be specified in molecular detail. Such systems are today theoretical, but should revolutionize 21st century manufacturing.
Dr. Merkle has worked as a nanotechnology researcher and theorist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Zyvex corporations. He served for several years as an executive editor of the journal Nanotechnology, chaired both the Fourth and Fifth Foresight Conferences on Molecular Nanotechnology, and won the 1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for theory. At the 6th Alcor conference in Scottsdale, Arizona he delivered a talk entitled "Nanotechnology and Cryonics," outlining the intersection between the two developing fields of science.
video
transcripts
2007 Foresight Vision Weekend,
Diamond Mechanosynthesis
CRN conference on the Future of Nano & Bio,
On Mechanosynthesis
6th Alcor Conference,
Nanotechnology and Cryonics
audio
Foresight Vision Weekend,
Diamond Mechanosynthesis