James Tour


James M. Tour is an American chemist and nanotechnologist. He is a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Education

Tour received degrees from Syracuse University, Purdue University and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Stanford University.

Career

James Tour's work has spanned organic chemistry and materials science with a focus on carbon materials chemistry and nanotechnology. Tour has over 700 research publications and over 130 patent families, with an H-index of 144 with total citations over 100,000.
Tour's work on carbon materials is broad and encompasses fullerene purification, composites, conductive inks for radio frequencies identification tags, carbon nanoreporters for identifying oil downhole, graphene synthesis from cookies and insects, graphitic electronic devices, carbon particle drug delivery for treatment of traumatic brain injury, the merging of 2D graphene with 1D nanotubes to make a conjoined hybrid material, a new graphene-nanotube 2D material called rebar graphene, graphene quantum dots from coal, gas barrier composites, graphene nanoribbon deicing films, supercapacitors and battery device structures, and water splitting to H2 and O2 using metal chalcogenides. His work with the synthesis of graphene oxide, its mechanism of formation, and its use in capturing radionuclides from water is extensive. Tour has developed oxide based electronic memories that can also be transparent and built onto flexible substrates. His group has all developed the use of porous metal structures to make renewable energy devices including batteries and supercapacitors, as well as electronic memories.
More recently, the Tour’s group discovery of laser-induced graphene has led to an enormous research area for graphene researchers worldwide, and this platform is being used to build an array of device structures made from LIG foams.  His lab’s discovery of the flash graphene process in 2019 for the 10-millisecond bulk formation of graphene from any carbon source, including coal, petroleum coke, biochar, food waste and even mixed plastic waste, is quickly being realized as a major development for environmental stewardship through materials and waste upcycling.   
Tour worked in molecular electronics and molecular switching molecules. He pioneered the development of the Nanocar, single-molecule vehicles with four independently rotating wheels, axles, and light-activated motors. Tour was the first to show that Feringa-based motors can be used to move a molecule on a surface using light as opposed to electric current from an STM tip. His early career focused upon the synthesis of conjugated polymers and precise oligomers.
Tour has also been involved in scientific outreach, such as NanoKids, an interactive learning DVD to teach children fundamentals of chemistry and physics. He also developed SciRave, a Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero package to teach science concepts to middle school and elementary school students. and much work on carbon nanotubes and graphene.
In the Scientific American article "Better Killing Through Chemistry", which appeared a few months after the September 11 attacks, Tour highlighted the ease of obtaining chemical weapon precursors in the United States.
Tour’s intellectual property has been the basis for the formation of numerous companies including Weebit, Dotz, Zeta Energy, NeuroCords, Xerient, LIGC Application Ltd., Nanorobotics, Universal Matter Ltd., Roswell Biotechnologies, and Rust Patrol.

Awards

Tour became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020 and was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry's Centenary Prize for innovations in materials chemistry with applications in medicine and nanotechnology. Tour was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. He was named among "The 50 most Influential Scientists in the World Today" by TheBestSchools.org in 2014. Tour was named "Scientist of the Year" by R&D Magazine in 2013. Tour won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society in 2012. Tour was ranked one of the top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade by Thomson Reuters in 2009. That year, he was also made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Other notable awards won by Tour include the 2008 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007, the Small Times magazine's Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from ACS in 2005, the Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 1989. In 2005, Tour's journal article "Directional Control in Thermally Driven Single-Molecule Nanocars" was ranked the Most Accessed Journal Article by the American Chemical Society. Tour has twice won the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University in 2007 and 2012. In 2016, Tour was listed as an ISI highly cited researcher.

A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism

In 2001, Tour was one of a small number of nationally prominent researchers among the five hundred scientists and engineers whose names appeared on the Discovery Institute's controversial petition, "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism". The petition states "we are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." The two-sentence statement has been widely used by its sponsor, the Discovery Institute, and some of their supporters in a national campaign to discredit evolution and to promote intelligent design.
"To those who are disconcerted or even angered that I signed a statement back in 2001" he responded "I have been labeled as an Intelligent Design proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there, in my opinion. So I prefer to be free of that ID label. As a modern-day scientist, I do not know how to prove intelligent design using my most sophisticated analytical tools— the canonical tools are, by their own admission, inadequate to answer the intelligent design question. I cannot lay the issue at the doorstep of a benevolent creator or even an impersonal intelligent designer. All I can presently say is that my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design."
He explained that he felt the explanations offered by evolution are incomplete, and he found it hard to believe that nature can produce the machinery of cells through random processes. On his website, he writes that "In biology, the mechanisms for such transformations are complete mysteries. I posit that the gross chemical changes needed for macroevolution are not understood and presently we cannot even suggest the mechanisms, let alone observe them…One day the requisite chemical basis might become apparent so that the questions can be answered. But present-day biology is far from providing even a chemical proposal for body plan changes, let alone a data-substantiated chemical mechanism."  In his lectures, Tour has referred to modern biology’s explanations for evolution of complex systems as little more than story-telling.  
Tour has written extensively on his viewpoint that all scientific studies to date are wholly inadequate to account for life. In multiple essays in the Inference: International Review of Science, Tour argues from a chemical perspective that the molecules needed for life - nucleotides, carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids - are too complex to have been formed by probabilistic chance and the methods to assemble those structures into a cell are unknown.Ultimately, he believes that on matters of life's origin, which is the genesis for all evolution, that scientists are "utterly clueless". Though he remains open to the possibility that future research will afford an explanation.
In Lee Strobel's book The Case For Faith - the following commentary is attributed to Tour: "I build molecules for a living, I can't begin to tell you how difficult that job is. I stand in awe of God because of what he has done through his creation. Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God."