The physicist Gerald Holton, in his essay “Modern Science and the Intellectual Tradition,” wrote that science is not about marching in lockstep toward the next breakthrough technology. In fact, he said, many of our foremost scientists don’t really pursue knowledge at all. Knowledge pursues them, overwhelms them. When this happens, scientists work in a thrall, without regard to disciplinary boundaries or the trappings of prestige. They almost seem to play.

Working on this issue’s cover story, I found this sense of play—in every visit, every conversation. I have checked my notes. None of these nanoscience guys used the word “important.” All of them used the word “game.”

So this is not a group that sets out to impress you. After all, we can easily imagine how difficult the science must be—working at the scale of individual atoms, wrestling with quantum mechanics and molecular chemistry and such. These are the kind of people who say, “Hey, let’s have some fun. Let’s mock things up with Play-Doh and ping-pong balls.” They enjoy what they do and they enjoy letting other people in on the fun. Nobody on this team needs to shout for attention. Washington is already watching. Industry is already watching. And science is watching. When top journals publish not only your faculty and your postdocs and your graduate students but your undergraduates, too, you know the stakes are high enough. No one needs to pump them any higher.

One day last March, I had the pleasure of accompanying my teenage daughter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We had a lot of fun that day. I didn’t have to sell her on those works of art, or justify them, or estimate their value in dollars and cents, or expound upon how they would improve her life. All I had to do was to stand aside, to let her encounter the works firsthand, to watch them overwhelm and enthrall her. Enthrall us both.

I would like to show her the pleasures of science in the same way. I wish she could stand and peer into a frame and watch a group of playful, passionate people reach deep into the dark unknown and illuminate something new. In this issue’s cover story, we will try to stand aside.

The Editor

Cover: Background, two carbon nanotubes on a graphite surface, rendered by Mike Falvo using the nanoManipulator. Clockwise from top right, Falvo’s image of layered perfluorooctadecanoic
acid and tetracosanoic acid deposited on mica; adenoviruses; and a tiny switch.