Carbon is an element that can assume a number of different forms. In nature, for example, it can be found as graphite or diamonds. In 1985, Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley discovered a brand new form - the fullerene.
Curl, Kroto and Smalley irradiated a surface of graphite with laser pulses so that carbon gas was formed. When the gas condensed, previously unknown structures with 60 and 70 carbon atoms were formed. The most common structure had 60 carbon atoms arranged in a sphere with five and six edges. The structures were called fullerenes in honour of architect Buckminster Fuller, who worked with this geometric shape. The paper 'C60: buckminsterfullerene' was published in Nature on 14 November 1985.
Curl, Kroto and Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their discovery of fullerenes."
Photo: (Left to right) Kroto, Curl and Smalley in 1996
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