How do you make a piece of glass for pale water? How do you protect metals from harsh chemicals?

Scientists have been puzzling over how to transform surfaces for centuries.

Jacob Sageev made a giant step forward in this field of research

by discovering a way to transform a solid surface with an ultra-thin layer of molecules.

He shares the cavity prize in nanoscience, with Ralph Nutsso, David Alara, and George White's sides

for discovering and applying an approach that's been used in everything from batteries to car windshields to dental implants.

Scientific American custom media, in partnership with the Cavley Prize, spoke with Jacob to learn more about his contribution to this work.

Jacob Sageev knew he wanted to be a chemist since he was a kid.

I played chemist since I was 10 years old.

But, of course, when you say chemist, what do you think? Think about test tubes, boiling something,

putting liquid from one bigger and to another bigger.

By the time he was in graduate school, Jacob had evolved from playing with test tubes to manipulating molecules.

The dream of chemist is to have a handle on each molecule to be able to put it in the right place and to build with molecules.

This is the ultimate goal that every chemist would dream about.

So far, Jacob had tried out different ways of arranging molecules by dissolving them into thin plastic film.

He found if he stretched this film, the molecules would line up and he could measure them.

It's in a solid, which is a polymer and you can have some control on how these molecules are organized by doing this.

And this was useful.

But by the time Jacob finished his PhD, he was hungry to do more and he needed a job.

I was looking for a postdoctoral position somewhere and I had a friend, a colleague who was also playing with molecules in polymers.

On his desk, I suddenly saw a paper with some strange pictures.

These strange pictures were simple, just lines and circles.

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