- Person
- Harry Kroto
- Lived
- 1939–2016
- Field
- Chemistry
- From
- British
The story
For centuries, chemists knew pure carbon in two forms: soft, black graphite and hard, clear diamond. Harry Kroto, a chemist at the University of Sussex and the son of a Jewish refugee from Berlin, helped find a third.
Kroto had been studying long carbon-chain molecules, which his group had detected in the clouds of gas between the stars, and he wanted to know how they formed near carbon-rich stars. In 1985 he joined Richard Smalley and Robert Curl at Rice University in Texas, where a powerful laser could vaporise materials and imitate such conditions. With students James Heath, Sean O’Brien and Yuan Liu, the team fired the laser at graphite. Among the products was a surprisingly stable molecule made of exactly sixty carbon atoms.
The only structure that made sense was a closed, hollow cage of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons, the pattern of a football. Kroto named it buckminsterfullerene after the architect Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes have a similar design; it soon became known as the buckyball. It was the first of a whole family of cage-shaped carbon molecules, the fullerenes. In 1990 other scientists found a way to make it in bulk, and research exploded.
The discovery changed how scientists thought about carbon. If carbon sheets could curve into balls, they could also roll into tubes. In 1991 carbon nanotubes were reported, and in 2004 graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms, was isolated. Physics World called C60 an early milestone on the way to these materials, which are now among the most important in nanotechnology and are used or being developed for strong lightweight composites, batteries, sensors and electronics. Fullerenes themselves are studied for solar cells and superconductors. Kroto shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Curl and Smalley, and the American Chemical Society named the discovery a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2010.
Why it matters
The buckyball opened the field of nanoscale carbon materials, whose descendants, nanotubes and graphene, are being built into stronger materials, better batteries and new electronics.
About Harry Kroto
Son of a Jewish refugee from Berlin who co-discovered the football-shaped carbon molecule C60, launching carbon nanoscience, and gave the world free science films and lessons. Nobel Prize 1996.
More about Harry Kroto
Sources
- Buckyball pioneer Harold Kroto dies at 76 Physics World
- Sir Harold Kroto, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Harry Kroto Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.