Remembering Sir Harold Kroto

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• published: 25 May 2016
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Of Carbon Structures And Soccer Balls THE PERFECT CARBON MOLECULE Harry Kroto was a co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. Sir Harold (although he much preferred Harry) anticipated that the heat of stars in distant space organized 60 carbon molecules into a specific patter of hexagons and pentagons. He and his fellow scientists were able to reproduce C60 in the laboratory and it took the shape of a soccer ball or geodesic dome. In honor of Buckminster Fuller they called the C60 structure the “buckeyball” and “fullerene”. They are critical to studying nanotechnology. Sir Harold Walter Kroto, FRS (born Harold Walter Krotoschiner; 7 October 1939 – 30 April 2016), known as Harry Kroto, was an English chemist. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes. He is the recipient of many other honors and awards. Kroto held many positions in academia throughout his life, most notably the Francis Eppes Professor of Chemistry at the Florida State University, which he joined in 2004. Prior to this, he spent a large part of his career at the University of Sussex, where he held an emeritus professorship. Kroto was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England, to Edith and Heinz Krotoschiner,[1][3] with his name being of Silesian origin.[4] His father's family came from Bojanowo, Poland, and his mother's from Berlin, Germany. Both his parents were born in Berlin and came to Great Britain in the 1930s as refugees from the Nazis because his father was Jewish. He was raised in Bolton, Lancashire, England, and attended Bolton School, where he was a contemporary of the highly acclaimed actor Ian McKellen. In 1955, the family name was shortened to Kroto.[1] As a child, he became fascinated by a Meccano set.[5] Kroto credited Meccano — amongst other things — with developing skills useful in scientific research.[4] He developed an interest in chemistry, physics, and mathematics in secondary school, and because his sixth form chemistry teacher (Harry Heaney – who subsequently became a University Professor) felt that the University of Sheffield had the best chemistry department in the United Kingdom, he went to Sheffield. Although raised Jewish, Harry Kroto stated that religion never made any sense to him.[4] He was a humanist who claimed to have three religions: Amnesty Internationalism, atheism, and humor.[6][7][8] He was a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.[9] In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[10] Kroto was educated at Bolton School and went to the University of Sheffield in 1958, where he obtained a first-class honours BSc degree in Chemistry (1961) and a PhD in Molecular Spectroscopy (1964).[1] During his time at Sheffield he also was the art editor of “Arrows” – the University student magazine, played tennis for the University team (reaching the UAU finals twice) and was President of the Student Athletics Council (1963–64). Among other things such as making the first phosphaalkenes (compounds with carbon phosphorus double bonds), his doctoral studies included unpublished research on carbon suboxide, O=C=C=C=O, and this led to a general interest in molecules containing chains of carbon atoms with numerous multiple bonds. He started his work with an interest in organic chemistry, but when he learned about spectroscopy it inclined him towards quantum chemistry; he later developed an interest in astrochemistry.[1] After obtaining his PhD, Kroto spent two-years in a postdoctoral position at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada carrying out further work in molecular spectroscopy, and also spent the subsequent year at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey (1966–1967) carrying out Raman studies of liquid phase interactions and worked on quantum chemistry. In 1967, Kroto began teaching and research at the University of Sussex in England. During his time at Sussex from 1967 to 1985, he carried out research mainly focused on the spectroscopic studies of new and novel unstable and semi-stable species. This work resulted in the birth of the various fields of new chemistry involving carbon multiply bonded to second and third row elements e.g. S, Se and P. A particularly important breakthrough (with Sussex colleague John Nixon) was the creation of several novel, new phosphorus species detected by microwave spectroscopy. This work resulted in the birth of the field(s) of phosphaalkene and phosphaalkyne chemistry. These species contain carbon double and triple bonded to phosphorus (C=P and C≡P)