Norio Taniguchi

Norio Taniguchi

Norio Taniguchi (谷口 紀男, Taniguchi Norio; May 27, 1912 – November 15, 1999) was a professor at the Tokyo University of Science. He is best known for creating the term nano-technology in 1974. He used this term to describe special ways of working with very tiny parts of materials.

Taniguchi started by studying how to cut and shape very hard materials very precisely. At his university, he led research using different kinds of energy beams, such as electricity, microwaves, electrons, light (like lasers), and ions, to shape materials at very small sizes.

From 1940 until the early 1970s, Taniguchi watched how machining, or shaping materials, was changing. He guessed that by the late 1980s, these methods would become so good that scientists could make things smaller than 100 nanometers, which is much smaller than the width of a human hair. His ideas helped lay the groundwork for the field of machining today.

Recognition

In May 1999, the European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology gave Professor Taniguchi its first Lifetime Achievement Award in Bremen. They honored him for his important work in ultra-precision materials processing and for first using the term Nanotechnology in 1974. His ideas helped shape a key technology for the 21st Century.