Robert Freitas

Robert A. Freitas Jr. is a Senior Research Fellow, one of four researchers at the nonprofit foundation Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) in Palo Alto, California. He holds a 1974 Bachelor's degree majoring in both physics and psychology from Harvey Mudd College, and a 1978 Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Santa Clara University. He has written more than 150 technical papers, book chapters, or popular articles on a diverse set of scientific, engineering, and legal topics. He co-edited the 1980 NASA feasibility analysis of self-replicating space factories and later authored the first detailed technical design study of a hypothetical medical nanorobot ever published in a refereed medical journal.

In 1977-78 Robert Freitas created the concept Sentience Quotient (SQ) as a way to describe the information processing rate in living organisms or computers (For a discussion see "Xenopsychology" linked below, first published in the April 1984 edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine).

Freitas is authoring Nanomedicine, the first multiple-book-length technical discussion of the potential medical applications of hypothetical molecular nanotechnology and hypothetical medical nanorobotics. Volume I was published in October 1999 by Landes Bioscience while Freitas was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing . He published Volume IIA in October 2003 with Landes Bioscience while serving as a Research Scientist at Zyvex Corp., a nanotechnology company headquartered in Richardson, Texas, during 2000-2004. Freitas is now completing Nanomedicine Volumes IIB and III and is consulting on hypothetical diamond mechanosynthesis and hypothetical molecular assembler design at IMM.

Also in 2004, Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle coauthored and published Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, the first survey of the field of physical and hypothetical self-replicating machines ever published. The book is available online in HTML format.

In 2006, he was awarded Lifeboat Foundation's Guardian Award.

Bibliography

• Robert A. Freitas Jr., Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities (Landes Bioscience, 1999) ISBN 1-57059-645-X
• Robert A. Freitas, Nanomedicine, Vol. IIA: Biocompatibility (Landes Bioscience, 2003) ISBN 1-57059-700-6
• Robert A. Freitas, Ralph C. Merkle, Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines (Landes Bioscience, 2004) ISBN 1-57059-690-5
• Robert A. Freitas, Nanomedicine: Biocompatibility (S Karger Pub, 2004) ISBN 3-8055-7722-2

See also

• K. Eric Drexler
• Ralph Merkle
• Ray Kurzweil (a colleague of sorts)
• Ecophagy

External links

• Robert Freitas's website (including his publications)
• Nanomedicine website Freitas' Nanomedicine book series on medical nanorobotics, freely available online
• Institute for Molecular Manufacturing website
• A paper on Respirocytes (artificial red cells) by Freitas (first medical nanorobot design paper ever published)
• A paper on Microbivores (artificial white cells) by Freitas
• Xenopsychology (including the Sentience Quotient) by Freitas
• Molecular assembler website
• Report on self-replicating space factories 1980 NASA Study edited by Freitas
• Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines first survey of field, by Freitas and Merkle
• Who's Who in the Nanospace

Donate to Wikimedia