Background
Nayfeh was born in December 1945, in the village of Shweikeh near Tulkarem, in what was then Mandatory Palestine.
Nayfeh was born in December 1945, in the village of Shweikeh near Tulkarem, in what was then Mandatory Palestine.
Following the 1948 Palestine war and Palestinian exodus, Nayfeh"s family was compelled to settle in Jordan, where he received his Thanaweyeh Ammeh (high school diploma). Professor Nayfeh then went onto to work in Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1974–1977, then at Yale University in 1977, finally joining the University of Illinois as a tenured professor in 1978. He has published over 130 papers, and several books, on Lasers, Electricity and Magnetism.
Nayfeh is most noted for his pioneering work in nanotechnology, and in 1977 answered the question that Richard Feynman posited in 1959 "what would happen if man could manipulate individual atoms? Using cutting edge technology in Lasers, Nayfeh succeeded in manipulating individual atoms into the shape of a "P" enclosed within a heart.
This ground breaking work revolutionised particle physics, and has enabled the advent of electron microscopes and nanotechnology.