Nobel Laureates Don't Rest, Create Art to Inspire Science

When the entrance to the lobby of the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center was in its early design stages an idea was proposed to have some art put on display that would inspire those that passed through the doors.

While initial concepts didn't pan out, one of the planning committee members recalled that IBM's own Nobel Laureate scientists, Georg Bednorz and Gerd Binnig, were actually very good artists in their own right -- who better to inspire scientists then the two of them?

Bednorz was the first of two to deliver. His yet "Untitled" sculpture was designed in bronze and the piece shows a scientist holding a molecular string (left) and graphene (right) and it is meant to inspire scientists to challenge themselves.

Delivered one week ago, "In Touch with Atoms" is a marble sculpture by Gerd Binnig. The title was inspired by a scientific paper, written by Binnig and fellow Nobel Laureate Heinrich Rohrer, of the same name published in Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 71, No. 2 in 1999.

The piece shows a hand carved in marble with a finger pointing atoms embossed in copper representing a silicon (111) surface with the 7 X 7 reconstruction, a pivotal system for the early demonstrations of atomic resolution with the scanning tunneling microscope.

Are you inspired?

See more of the photos of both pieces "Untitled" and "In Touch with Atoms".