Manufacturing takes place in very large facilities. If you want to build a computer chip, you need a giant semiconductor fabrication facility. But nature can grow complex molecular machines using nothing more than a plant.

1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for computational modeling of molecular tools for atomically-precise chemical reactions
1999 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award
2000 RSA award for the invention of public key cryptography. Career
Merkle was the manager of compiler development at Elxsi from 1980. Hamming Medal in 2010.

Ralph C. Merkle appears in the science fiction novel The Diamond Age involving nanotechnology.