Groundbreakers in the field of Nanotechnology worldwide, these scientists have created new, revolutionary materials and transcendental techniques for fighting diseases, such as those related to the brain and cancer, and for producing artificial tissues and organs. Their work also stands out for its contribution to the protection of the environment and energy saving via the use of new sources of clean energy that may be produced at a low cost.

All these technological innovations and scientific discoveries are of special importance in the fight against poverty, such as the inexpensive purification of drinking water in the planet´s more underprivileged areas. The possibility of using reduced-cost, low-energy consumption sources of light in this fight is likewise worthy of mention.

George M. Whitesides was born in Louisville (USA) in 1939. He studied at the University of Harvard (USA) and was awarded a Ph.D by the California Institute of Technology in 1964. He worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1982. He joined the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University in 1982, serving as chairman between 1986 and 1989. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at this same university between 1989 and 1992.

He has developed techniques for the fabrication of nanoscale materials that are both novel and efficient. These include soft lithography, by means of which a molecule is employed as a support or mould for generating an enormous amount of molecules with certain characteristics. He is also one of the fathers of molecular self-assembly, which allows materials to be grown in an organised way, and soft lithography, in which a nanomaterial serves as a mould or support to create materials presenting certain characteristics.

He has acted as an advisor to US institutions such as the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and NASA. Author of 1,015 articles which have been cited 37,253 times, he has developed 70 patents and, with an h-index of 40, leads the ranking in Chemistry worldwide. Recipient of an honorary Ph.D from the University of Twente (Holland), he was awarded the US National Medal of Science (1998), the Von Hippel Award from the Materials Research Society (USA, 2000), the Inamori Foundation Kyoto Prize (Japan, 2003), the Paracelsus Prize from the Swiss Society of Chemistry (2004), the Dan David Prize (Israel, 2005) and the Welch Award (USA, 2005). He is a Member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Holland and of the National Academy of Sciences of India, as well as belonging to the main American scientific societies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Philosophical Society and the New York Academy of Science, among others.