bearing the rare brand of a native of this transient state, Florida, i've long grown up under the shadow of an architectural invention envisioned by one of my long geek crushes and endless self-study fascination. thing is, when the Epcot center opened at Disney World in october of 1982, i had no idea its iconic golfball-like dome could be the precise shape that someday saves my life.
buckyballs - as the specific arrangement of carbon molecules or Fullerenes are known - were named after the noted architect and futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the geodesic dome.
now, i have long been drawn to the legacy of such an intriguing man who, in his life formulated over 28 patents…and countless other inventions that were scoffed at and never pursued by industry. but what keeps drawing me to him as an orient point in my own bookish, rambling-student-of-life education and exploration is that Buckminster Fuller was a remarkable visionary.
demonstrating a prescient understanding for how things work, R.Buckminster invented and streamlined his inventions from his earliest years. he was such a charismatic tinkerer in fact, that he was expelled from Harvard University twice: once for entertaining an entire dance troupe, and eventually for his seeming lack of interest and general irresponsibility. but it wasn't until 1927 when he lost his young daughter to polio and spinal meningitis that he determined to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world ... benefiting all humanity."
his own tragedy focused his intentions on tackling the question of whether humanity really has hope of surviving on this planet and how to most successfully do so. how fitting then, to return to that image of the dome in consideration of why technology matters to me.
the discoverers of Fullerenes won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996, but the remarkable trends incorporating their studies have recently been making a lot of noise in the scientific community. seems like buckyballs are transforming developments in nanotechnology to make the most microscopic elements of medicine more stable, improving the eventual success of transplants.
living daily with juvenile diabetes it's eerie to think of how the globe-like dome of a nearby tourist destination could symbolize my hope for a better life. for more about how the physical structure of Fullerenes are transforming the realm of nanotechnology. click here.
seems like the smallest things in the realm of science might just offer me and countless others living with this potentially life-limiting disease the greatest hope. work is already being done to make the practice of daily blood glucose testing more streamlined. and further developments in nanotechnology will only increase the efficacy of experiments to ultimately cure diabetes like those being done at the University of Alberta, Canada.
somehow, i think Buckminster would be honored. his lifetime of renegade scientific vision coupled with humanitarian imperative might exponentially improve the chances for survival on this planet after all.
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