Konstantin Likharev, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, a co-inventor of the single-electron transistor, is working on ways to combine it with conventional transistors to make super-dense memory chips.

ECONOMIST: The transistor��s heir

Academic authorities, first at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and then at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, were aware of his low boredom threshold and let him rove between his native chemistry, physics and medicine, knowing that if this professor was left to himself he might well produce something extraordinary.

ECONOMIST: Paul Lauterbur | The