It's a lovely northern california day early last November, and you would expect K. Eric Drexler to be pleased. By almost any measure, his Foresight Institute's conference on nanotechnology is a raging success. After years of struggling to gain the respect of the mainstream research community, the meeting has hit the scientific big time.

This year's keynote speaker is Steven Chu, a physicist at Stanford University and recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize for his work on manipulating atoms. The conference's technical sessions are packed with talks by some of the most prestigious names in chemistry, biophysics and materials science. Three days of presentations cover the latest work in carbon nanotubes, molecular wires, biomotors in living cells and nanofabrication. Out of about 300 registered attendees, roughly 40 are from corporate research groups, and more than 120 from academic or government labs. Even the National Science Foundation has sponsored a forum.