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Diagnosis of the FullereneFever on the Occasion of the1996 Nobel Prize in ChemistryTibor Braun & Eiji OsawaPublished online: 24 Sep 2006.

To cite this article: Tibor Braun & Eiji Osawa (1997) Diagnosis of the FullereneFever on the Occasion of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Fullerene Science andTechnology, 5:2, iii-v, DOI: 10.1080/15363839708011991

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15363839708011991

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FULLERENE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 5(2), iii-v (1997)

EDITORIAL

Diagnosis of the Fullerene Fever on the Occasion of

the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Does the awarding of this years' Nobel prize for Chemistry to the

discovery of fullerene by Harold Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert

Curl signify the end of fullerene fever' that stcarted in 1990 but rumored

to have decreased in these years? Will C,, nanotubes, nanocapsules and

other familiar heroes of the last few years in chemical literature' phase

out with the decline in the funding of basic research?

We will show below two pieces of evidence against the prevailing

pessimism. Figure 1 supplements the 1985- 1993 statistics on fullerene

publications3 by including data from a personal database of fullerene

publications.' Up to 1990 when the total yearly publications did not

exceed 100 both databases agree well, but since 1991 FLDB collects

about one half of the whole literature. The 1996 number is estimated by

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2500

2000

01

0 .- - 2 1500 4

500

0 19851986 19871988198919901991 1992 1993199419951996

Year

FIG. 1. The yearly growth of journal papers on fullerenes.

doubling the number of FLDB publications collected by the end of

September 1996, which may be indicative but not necessarily reliable.

Judging from the continued sharp increase in the size of FLDB during

1994-1995, we think that the total volume of fullerene research as reflected

in the journal literature is still on the rise. The leveling off of 1996, if

true, may be interpreted to reflect the sharp decrease in the funding of

basic science in the US, where fullerene research was until now very

intensive.

Although there is no perfectly reliable statistics at the moment, we

are feeling that the number of fullerene papers from Asia and Europe is

increasing. In connection with this trend, we wish to refer to the remarkable

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EDITORIAL V

act of Japanese government which passed the Science and Technology

Basic Law on in November 1995 defining the necessity of basic research

as a national policy. Furthermore, in July 1996, a plan on how to accomplish

this Law has been approved in a cabinet meeting, which decided that the

total expenditure for basic research in five years from now should reach

the level of 1.7 trillion yen. With other details in this plan such as the

introduction of a contract system in the hiring of professors and the

increase in the number of postdoctoral fellowship up to 10,000, we

anticipate a bright future for basic research. This brave act should have a

favorable influence on science policy in other countries. Obviously

fullerene research will be one of the areas that benefit most from an

increase in basic support.

References

1. T. Braun, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 31 (1992), 588.

2. T. Braun, Editorial, Fullerene Sci. Technol. 5 (1997) 1.

3. T. Braun, A. Schubert, H. Maczelka, L. Vasvari, Fullerene Research

1985-1993, World Scientific, Singapore, 1995.

4. E. osawa, Fullerene Literature Database (FLDB). This is a personal

database of fullerene reprints based on Current Contents on Diskette.

Tibor Braun and Eiji 6.sawa

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