Sir Harold Kroto is an English chemist who, with Richard Smalley and Robert Curl Jr, received the 1996 chemistry prize for their joint discovery of fullerene carbon compounds. He was knighted earlier in his laureate year.
He was born Harold Walter Krotoschiner in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, in 1939, to German parents who fled Berlin because his father was Jewish. The family soon moved to Lancashire where Harold was “the kid with the funny name” at Bolton School. In 1955 the family name was shortened to Kroto. Harold helped out at his father’s toy balloon factory, and as a child loved his Meccano set – both good proving grounds for a budding scientist. He also took a keen interest in his science, particularly chemistry lessons as well as art. It was one of his Chemistry teachers who recommended that he should go to Sheffield University, and he took a place there in 1958. Kroto played tennis for the university – ending up as president of the Athletics Council. He was also art editor of “Arrows” the student magazine for which he created the covers and posters and designed prize-winning book jackets. He got married, in 1963, to Margaret Hunter.
However, he still found time to study, earning a first class BSc (Hons) in 1961 and a PhD (1964). His doctoral research involved high-resolution electronic spectra of free radicals. Some preliminary unpublished work on carbon suboxide at that time initiated a general interest in linear molecules containing chains of carbon atoms and their dynamic behaviour. After postdoctoral research in Canada and the USA he joined the University of Sussex faculty in 1967, becoming a full professor in 1985, and a Royal Society Research Professor from 1991–2001. He continued his work on unstable molecules and with a colleague David Walton – who was an expert on polyynes – started a detailed study of carbon chains which subsequently led to a radioastronomy programme which uncovered the unexpected result that such molecules existed in interstellar space and also the gas ejected from carbon stars.
It was while he was visiting Richard Smalley’s lab at Rice University in Texas at the instigation of Robert Curl that he suddenly realised that Smalley’s ingenious laser vapourisation cluster beam apparatus might be able to simulate the carbon chemistry in the gas around carbon stars. The experiment he suggested, carried out together with graduate students Jim Heath, Sean O’Brien and Yuan Liu, in early September 1985, not only produced the expected carbon chains but also a totally unexpected hollow, spherical C60 molecule – 60 carbon atoms bonded together with the same 12 pentagon/20 hexagon pattern of the modern soccer ball. Kroto called the molecule buckminsterfullerene, or ‘buckyball’, after R Buckminster Fuller, who designed geodesic dome buildings as at the time the American architect’s ideas were instrumental at arriving at a possible structure. In 1995, Kroto set up the Vega Science Trust to create educational science films. He presently carries out research in Nanoscience. Kroto is a Fellow of the Royal Society and past (2002–2004) president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
He has received several awards including honourary degrees. In 2004 he returned an honorary degree to the University of Exeter in protest at the closure of their chemistry department. The same year he took up a position at the Florida State University. He is a supporter of Amnesty International, the British Humanist Association, and says he is “an atheist (or free-thinker), a humanist and a humourist”.
This text and the picture of the Nobel Laureate were taken from the book: "NOBELS. Nobel Laureates photographed by Peter Badge" (WILEY-VCH, 2008).
Picture: © Peter Badge/ Foundation Lindau Nobelprizewinners Meetings at Lake Constance
Links:
Vega Science Trust
http://www.vega.org.uk
Geoset initiative website
http://geoset.group.shef.ac.uk/ |
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BENEFACTORS:
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(BD) Bangladesh Academy of Science
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(ZA) South African Reserve Bank
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