Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is an American engineer best known for introducing molecular nanotechnology (MNT), and his studies of its potential from the 1970s and 1980s.

[3] Besides working summers for O'Neill, building mass driver prototypes, Drexler delivered papers at the first three Space Manufacturing conferences at Princeton.

In 2006, Drexler married Rosa Wang, a former investment banker who works with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public on improving the social capital markets.

[8] Drexler's work on nanotechnology was criticized as naive by Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley in a 2001 Scientific American article.

[11] The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in its 2006 review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, argues that it is difficult to predict the future capabilities of nanotechnology:[12] Although theoretical calculations can be made today, the eventually attainable range of chemical reaction cycles, error rates, speed of operation, and thermodynamic efficiencies of such bottom-up manufacturing systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time.

Research funding that is based on the ability of investigators to produce experimental demonstrations that link to abstract models and guide long-term vision is most appropriate to achieve this goal.

[12]Drexler is mentioned in Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel The Diamond Age as one of the heroes of a future world where nanotechnology is ubiquitous.

[13] In the science fiction novel Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod, a 'drexler' is a nanotech assembler of pretty much anything that can fit in the volume of the particular machine—from socks to starships.

[15] James Rollins references Drexler's Engines of Creation in his novel Excavation, using his theory of a molecular machine in two sections as a possible explanation for the mysterious "Substance Z" in the story.

[19] The Drexler Facility (ドレクサー機関) of molecular nanotechnology research in the Japanese eroge visual novels Baldr Sky is named after him.