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Published online 26 November 1999 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news991202-1

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Focus on carbon nanotubes

The discovery of nanotubes

Luck favours the prepared mind, as Louis Pasteur said, and Japanese scientist Sumio Iijima's mind was certainly well prepared for his amazing discovery in 1991. Iijima is a microscopist at the NEC Corporation, a Japanese electronics company, and for many years he had studied the atomic-scale structure of carbon fibres.

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