Laureate Biography
Sir Harold Kroto (known as Harry) received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for discovering that carbon atoms can assemble into beautiful soccer-ball-shaped cages of molecules, known as fullerenes or buckyballs.
Born Harold Walter Krotoschiner in 1939 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, to parents who were born in Berlin and came to Britain as refugees, his father changed the family name to Kroto in 1955. Kroto’s family moved to Bolton, Lancashire, and he says his earliest memories of school were being the child with the funny name and being forced to finish school dinners.
His parents did everything they could to get Kroto the best education they could. Though he did not like exams or homework anymore than other kids, he did enjoy school and spent as much time as he could there studying, in particular art, geography, gymnastics and woodwork. At home he played with his Meccano set endlessly, which he said taught him important engineering skills. As he progressed through school, Kroto’s interests gravitated towards chemistry, physics and mathematics, as well as gymnastics and tennis.
Kroto obtained his BSc in Chemistry in 1961 and a PhD in Molecular Spectroscopy in 1964 at the University of Sheffield, UK. After a postdoctoral position at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, from 1964 to 1966, he spent a year at the Murray Hill Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. In 1967, he moved back to the UK to work at the University of Sussex, Brighton.
IIn 1970, laboratory and radioastronomy studies led to the surprising discovery that long linear chains of carbon molecules exist in interstellar space and in stars, and Kroto became interested in using microwave spectroscopy to investigate these compounds. Through Robert Curl, Kroto discovered that Richard Smalley had built an apparatus at Rice University in Houston, Texas that could vaporize any material with lasers, and Kroto wanted to blast graphite to simulate the type of chemical reactions that take place in the atmosphere of red giant stars.
He travelled to Rice University, and in September 1985, Kroto, Curl and Smalley began investigating any linear chains of carbon molecules created through this laser-ablation method, but instead they discovered an unexpected and puzzling product, C60. Only twelve days after they had began their experiments, Kroto, Curl and Smalley submitted their results in a paper to the journal Nature. Published around two months later, the authors proposed that C60 had a unique hollow and spherical shape, like a soccer ball. They named it Buckminsterfullerene, as it had reminded Kroto of the geodesic dome designed by the architect Buckminster Fuller for the American pavilion at the Expo ’67 in Montreal.
The discovery of C60 caused Kroto to shelve his dream of setting up a studio specializing in scientific graphic design, which he had been doing semi-professionally for years. The Sussex and Rice groups spent a further five years amassing further evidence that their proposed structure for C60 and other members of the fullerene family was correct, and in 1990 the physicists Wolfgang Kratschmer and Donald Huffman succeeded in isolating the material.
In 1990, Kroto was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society. In 1995, he launched the Vega Science Trust to create science films of sufficient high quality for network television broadcast. The following year he was knighted for his contributions to chemistry.
In 2007, he started a new educational initiative at Florida State University called GEOSET (Global Education Outreach in Science, Engineering and Technology). He has received honorary degrees from a number of universities in the UK and abroad, as well as many scientific awards. He has been on the Scripps Institute Board of Scientific Governors since 2004, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996
Sir Harold Kroto’s Nobel Lecture
Sir Harold Kroto’s personal web page
Wikipedia: Harold Kroto
