George M. Whitesides

Photographer: Steve Marsel

Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry, Harvard University

Most Important Technology of the Last 40 Years:

Information technology and biology.

Most Important Technology for the Coming Decade:

Information technology and biology.

Technology That has Evolved in a Surprising Way:

The rise of globalization.

"There will be lots of pushes, from both commercial and national security points of view, as well as from basic science, to understand the behavior of groups of people in the same way that we now understand the behavior of atoms and molecules. We are moving from isolated information about individuals—your phone and credit card records, your DNA sequence—to a status in which collective behavior becomes more apparent. People will be working on going from data to information to understanding to action.

"We live in a world in which we are constantly surprised by what is happening. Could we have predicted the emergence of AIDS? Can we predict the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Africa? Are we about to precipitate the next Ice Age? The problem is pretty well defined, but it is a complex system, and we don't have the information. Within the next 10 to 20 years, we will.

"Another area that will be interesting is the interface between living and nonliving systems. How do you plug your computer into your brain? We're a long way from that, but the question of how you build interfaces from the world of ion currents and proteins to the world of photons and electrons will be one we pay attention to. It is a key issue in augmenting human capabilities and in decision making. We will also begin to get a grip on what life is. How do you go from what we know is just chemical reactions—to you? These are deeply exciting problems."