Moungi Bawendi’s speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 10 December 2023.

Your Majesties,
Your Royal Highnesses,
Excellences,
Dear Laureates,
Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of Prof. Louis Brus, Dr. Aleksey Yekimov, and myself, we would like to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation for the magnificent honor that this prize confers. We are indebted to our students, postdoctoral fellows, and our collaborators for their contributions that have been integral to this prize. We are deeply grateful for the support of our families and our friends.

Scientists are explorers, we ask questions and resolve to find answers about the world around us. The answers sometimes change us profoundly, and sometimes they lead to technologies with big impact. In our case the exploration began with a simple question about the emergence of properties from the atomic to the macroscopic.

The building up of a macroscopic crystal begins with a few atoms or molecules that are then joined with more atoms or molecules. The initial atoms or molecules look nothing like the final product. In the beginning stages of growth, the magical laws of quantum mechanics dominate, but as the crystal grows the more mundane properties of classical mechanics emerge. Wondering about how the atomic world evolves into the macroscopic one inevitably leads us through a wonderful new world, the nano-world, which we now call the realm of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Quantum dots, for which we are being honored here today were at the birth of this new realm. They shine brightly on its future and the yet un-imagined possibilities it offers.

So tonight, let us raise a toast to the human drive for exploration, and to the future of nanoscience.

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