Harold Kroto

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996 together with Robert F. Curl Jr., and Richard E. Smalley “for their discovery of fullerenes”.

Sir Harold (Harry) Kroto is currently a Francis Eppes professor of Chemistry at Florida State University, where he is carrying out research in nanoscience and cluster chemistry as well as developing new internet approaches to STEM educational outreach.

In 1996 he was knighted for his contributions to chemistry and later that year was one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and holds an emeritus professorship at the University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom.

The research program focuses on the complex range of molecular constituents in carbon vapour; the devel­opment of novel 2 and 3D metal-cluster/organic frameworks as well as peptides; the stabilization of small fullerenes; and carbon nanotube based devices behaviour.

He has also initiated the Global Educational Outreach for Science, Engineer­ing, and Technology programme (GEOSET) which seeks to exploit the revolutionary creative dynamics the Internet (which he calls it the GooYouWiki-World) to improve the general level of science teaching worldwide.

Harry obtained a first class BSc honours degree in chemistry (1961) and a PhD, in molecular spectroscopy in 1964 at the University of Sheffield (UK). After post-doctoral positions at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada (1964-66) and at the Murray Hill Bell Laboratories (NJ, US) in 1966-67 he started his independent academic career at the University of Sussex.

In 1970 his research group conducted laboratory and radio astronomy studies on long linear carbon chain molecules, and with Canadian astronomers discovered that they existed in interstellar space.

In 1985 together with Robert Curl, Richard Smalley and research students Jim Heath, Sean O’Brien and Yuan Liu at Rice Univer­sity (Texas) he carried out laboratory experiments which simulated the chemical reactions in the atmosphere of red giant stars. These experiments uncovered the existence of C₆₀ Buckminsterfullerene, a new form of carbon for which he together with Curl and Smalley received the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In 1995, he launched the Vega Science Trust to create science films of sufficiently high quality for broadcast on UK network television.  He has several other awards including the Copley Medal and Faraday Lectureship of the Royal Society and the Longstaff Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

He holds some 30 honorary degrees from universities all over the world. From 2004 he has been on the Board of Scientific Governors at Scripps Institute. He was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.