Konstantin Likharev, at theStateUniversityofNewYork at StonyBrook, a co-inventor ofthe single-electron transistor, is working on ways to combine it with conventional transistors to make super-dense memory chips.
Academic authorities, first at theStateUniversityofNewYork at StonyBrook and then at theUniversityof 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.