The unlikely, eccentric inventor turning inedible plant life into fuel

Marshall Medoff with correspondent Lesley Stahl

You never know who's gonna be the one with the big idea. History has shown it's not necessarily the person with the most impressive credentials.

A breakthrough can come from the least expected, perhaps like an 81-year-old eccentric from Massachusetts who toiled in isolation with no financial support for more than a decade.

His focus? A challenge that has stumped scientists for many years – how to transform inedible plant life into environmentally friendly transportation fuels in a clean and cost-effective way.

This unlikely inventor calls himself messianic, as in the messiah. And likes to say, matter-of-factly, that he is "saving the world."

Lesley Stahl: And that's what you think? 

Marshall Medoff: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: You think, "I'm saving the world."

Marshall Medoff: I don't think. I don't think, I know that.

Who says things like that? Marshall Medoff does. He's a man on a mission who decided one day that he was going stop global warming.

But while engineers, geologists and ecologists with Ph.D.s went to labs at MIT and Stanford, Medoff went to one of the country's most legendary settings for reflection.  

Marshall Medoff: I used to run out to-- Walden, which wasn't that far away.

Lesley Stahl: You mean Walden Pond?

Marshall Medoff: Yeah.

Lesley Stahl: Thoreau?

Marshall Medoff: Yeah.

Lesley Stahl: Okay.

Marshall Medoff: What I thought was, the reason people were failing is they were trying to overcome nature instead of working with it.

He knew that there's a lot of energy in plant life. It's in the form of sugar molecules that once accessed can be converted into transportation fuel. The key word is "access." This sugar is nearly impossible to extract cheaply and cleanly since it is locked tightly inside the plant's cellulose, the main part of a plant's cellular walls. What's so tantalizing is that sugar-rich cellulose is the most abundant biological material on earth. 

Marshall Medoff: Cellulose is everywhere. I mean, there's just so much cellulose in the world and nobody had managed to use any of it. Couldn't get at it.

Lesley Stahl: So that was your target. Click here to continue reading.