Ten Nobels for the future

Harold W. Kroto was born in 1939 in Wisbech, England, after his Jewish family had escaped from Germany in 1937. He went to Bolton School, where he was "attracted by the smells and bangs that endowed chemistry with that slight but charismatic element of danger which is now banned from the classroom." He was encouraged by his chemistry teacher to go to Sheffield University, where his real passion, apart from tennis, was art: he became art editor of the students’ magazine and specialised in designing the magazines’ covers and advertising posters, and painting murals. He nevertheless got a first class honours BSc degree in Chemistry in 1961 and a PhD on the spectroscopy of free radicals produced by flash photolysis in 1964.

After a post-doctoral position at the National Research Council in Ottawa from 1964 to 1966 and spending a year at Bell Labs (Murray Hill), in 1967 he started his academic career at the University of Sussex in Brighton, thinking he would give himself "five years to make a go of research and teaching and if it was not working out, [he] would retrain to do graphic design or go into scientific educational".

By 1970, however, he had carried out research in the electronic spectroscopy of gas phase free radicals and was moving on to liquid phase Raman studies. By 1974 he had finally obtained a much awaited microwave spectrometer and the first molecule he used it for was the carbon chain species HC5N (to which the start of his role of the discovery of C₆₀ can be traced directly). Laboratory and radioastronomy studies on long linear carbon chain molecules led to the surprising discovery that they existed in interstellar space and also in stars. This led to laboratory experiments with co-workers at Rice University which simulated the chemical reactions in the atmosphere of red giant stars which in 1985 serendipitously uncovered the existence of C₆₀.

C₆₀ is an elegant molecule shaped as a soccer ball, christened Buckminsterfullerene to honour the American architect who had conceived the geodesic cupola that the molecule, on the microscopic scale, seems to replicate.

The discovery of C₆₀ caused Kroto to shelve his dream of setting up a studio specialising in scientific graphic design (which he had been doing semiprofessionally for years). He therefore decided to probe the consequences of the C₆₀ concept and to exploit the synthetic chemistry and material sciences application. In 1991 he was awarded a Royal Society Research Professorship which enabled him to concentrate on research.

In 1995, together with Patrick Reams, a BBC producer, he inaugurated 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 and awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry together with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley.

Harold W. Kroto has received honourary degrees from several universities in the UK and abroad, as well as many scientific awards including the International Prize for New Materials by the American Physical Society (1992) the Italgas Prize for Innovation in Chemistry (1992) and the Royal Society of Chemistry Longstaff Medal (1993).

1997
C₆₀ Buckminsterfullerene:
not just a pretty molecule