On the way up the chairlift at a ski resort, UCSB physics Professor Alan Heeger and his son David came up with an idea. Alan was chatting away about his research, telling David about the latest and greatest in plastic materials.

      David, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University, realized that his father's latest material did a kind of processing that was similar to the first steps of neural processing done in the retina. The chairlift discussion turned into a 1995 father-son paper in Science magazine on building a device out of conductive plastics that could perform similar functions as a human retina.

      The Heegers have been a busy family ─ the other son Peter is an immunologist at Case Western University, and has also worked with his father. Working across disciplines with his sons is all part of the way Alan Heeger practices science. It has served him well; his research has led to commercial success for a new kind of plastics useful in computer screens, "smart" windows that automatically block sunlight, cellular phone displays and flat-screen televisions.

      Heeger's contribution was discovering a way to make plastics conduct electricity, opening up the possibilities for these commercial applications.

      The impact of this was understood by the Nobel Prize Committee, which called from Sweden on Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 6:15 a.m.

      Heeger doesn't remember what the man said, or how long the phone call lasted. "You ought to remember what someone says at a time like that," he recalled, "but I don't remember what he said. I remember I understood what was going on. It lasted I don't remember how long. I remember I wanted to get off the phone and start shouting."

      He had only 15 minutes before the Prize Committee announced the award to the world ─ enough time to call his two sons and close family. And then, the phone began ringing.

      David Heeger was just as excited. "I mean, the phone rings ... no one ever calls us before 6 a.m.," he said. "I was thinking this was one of those automated advertising things. I was completely surprised; I started yelling and jumping up and down. I woke up my two daughters. I'm surprised we didn't wake up the neighbors."

      It took a lifetime of work in the sciences for the 64-year-old Heeger to get to that point.

      He was raised in Nebraska, where he took an early interest in science and mathematics. "I didn't find it particularly easy," he said. "In fact, that was part of the reason I wanted to go farther with it. There must be something here I can understand."

      He went to the University of Nebraska for his undergraduate studies, where he picked engineering as his major ─ for one quarter. With no experience in the subject, he changed his major to physics. But something bothered him. "Somehow," he said, "I always felt this wasn't the real stuff yet, and I was looking forward to graduate school for that."

      As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, Heeger got his chance. "I remember the first day in the laboratory," he said. "The courses are very important, but I just didn't feel I was really doing science until I was doing my own science, and that was such a thrill for me. I got a big kick out of it."

      The 1980s were a decade of advances in polymer science, where researchers uncovered many of the underlying chemical and physical principles of the plastics. "It looked like the materials were coming to a point of maturity where you could see the possibility of commercial products or applications," Heeger said.

      In the 1990s, scientists like Heeger began to first consider the applications of polymers ─ a wildly successful consideration. The new polymers have all the conducting properties of metal semiconductors, but they keep the properties of plastic as well. They can be melted, put in solutions and processed cheaply.

      In recent years, Heeger has moved into applications, exploring the use of polymers in bio-sensors with his son Peter. It's a new way of doing science, reaching across disciplines, but one that has always been a hallmark of Heeger's career.

      "You're learning," he said. "It's a little dangerous, because you're pushing into directions you know little about, so you can make a mistake. So, you really need colleagues to interact with, to help the whole thing keep on the right track. But basically, my whole scientific life has been an example of interdisciplinary science. I started out as a physicist, but I guess I am what I have become."

(765 words)

↑TOP