On Nano

When I joined IISER, I had no idea about what basic science research is. All I knew was that science fascinates me. It fascinates because it is challenging, novel and demanding. To express my candor, I must confess that my first year here was like dwelling in an aerie. Right from entanglement to molecular motors, everything was fascinating! This was an uncanny experience and I fell into a perplexing situation where selection from options apparently demanded a meticulous effort. My NIUS project eventually turned out to be 'nano-based'. I was doing physics and chemistry there with biological molecules like lysozyme. Then I realized that nano is nothing but a novel approach of connecting various disciplines. No matter who is giving a talk on nano, a biologist, a chemist or a physicist, everyone starts with the famous RPF quote. I suspect how much popularity Feynman would have expected for his monologue ' ...plenty of room...'!
Nevertheless, when you go through Nature nanotech or PNAS or ACS or even PRLs and PLs, nano is ubiquitous. From basic scoience point of view, I realize that it is the qustion that we are asking is more important than whether it belongs to so and so area of research or not. Be it a Physical Chemistry problem or a Biophysics problem or a Biochemistry one, getting deeper into the field to uncover the enigma is really challenging and fascinating. It is, after all, nano!