Norio Taniguchi

Norio Taniguchi was a Japanese engineer credited with coining the term 'nano-technology'. A professor at the Tokyo University of Science, he introduced the word in a 1974 paper to describe the precision machining and processing of materials to tolerances of a nanometer or less, distinguishing this ultra-precise engineering from conventional micro-scale manufacturing. Though his original usage referred mainly to top-down precision machining rather than the molecular-assembly vision later associated with the field, his coinage became the standard name for the broader discipline of engineering at the nanometer scale.