Kim Eric Drexler (born 25 April 1955) is an American author and engineer, previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute.

Drexler is most famous for his pioneering work on atomically precise manufacturing, especially as presented in his books Engines of Creation,^[1] a popular introduction to the core ideas, and Nanosystems,^[2] a comprehensive graduate-level survey of the field (itself based on his MIT doctoral thesis^[3][4]). More recently, Drexler’s research has focused on AI risk, where he has developed an approach he calls Comprehensive AI Services.^[5] Drexler has also made original contributions to the Fermi paradox,^[6] space colonization,^[7] distributed computing,^[8] hypertext publishing,^[9] and other fields.^[10][11]

Further reading

Amato, Ivan (1991) The apostle of nanotechnology, Science, vol. 254, pp. 1310–1311.
A short profile of Drexler, focusing on his early work in nanotechnology.

Bassett, Deborah R. (2010) Drexler, K. Eric, in David Guston (ed.) Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Society, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 168–170.
A brief entry on Drexler, with emphasis on his role in the development of nanotechnology.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2007) The stealth threat: An interview with K. Eric Drexler, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 63, pp. 55–58.

Drexler, K. Eric (2013) Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, New York: PublicAffairs.

Edwards, Steven A. (2006) The Nanotech Pioneers: Where Are They Taking Us?, Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
A short biography of Drexler is found on pp. 18-21.

Regis, Ed (1990) Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Regis, Ed (2004) The incredible shrinking man, Wired, October 1.
A profile of Drexler.

1. ^

   Drexler, K. Eric (1986) Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, New York: Anchor Books.

2. ^

   Drexler, K. Eric (1992) Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

3. ^

   Drexler, K. Eric (1991) Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation, PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

4. ^

   See also Drexler, K. Eric (1981) Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general capabilities for molecular manipulation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 78, pp. 5275–5278.

5. ^

   Drexler, K. Eric (2019) Reframing superintelligence: Comprehensive AI services as general intelligence, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.

6. ^

   Sandberg, Anders, K. Eric Drexler & Toby Ord (2018) Dissolving the Fermi paradox, arXiv, June 6.

7. ^

   Drexler, K. Eric & N. J. May (1979) High performance solar sails and related reflecting devices, 4th Conference on Space Manufacturing Facilities Princeton University, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

8. ^

   Miller, Mark S. & K. Eric Drexler (1988) ‘Markets and computation: Agoric open systems’, in B. A. Huberman (ed.) The Ecology of Computation, Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 133–176.

9. ^

   Drexler (1986) Engines of Creation, ch. 14.

10. ^

    Drexler, K. Eric (2009) How to understand everything (and why), Metamodern, May 17.

11. ^

    Drexler, K. Eric (2009) How to learn about everything, Metamodern, May 27.