From 1958 till 1964, Kroto studied chemistry at the University of Sheffield, earning his first-class honors Bachelor of Science degree in 1961, and completed his Doctor of Philosophy there in 1964 with a focus on spectroscopy.
Polymer-based Nanostructures: Medical Applications
(This book offers a truly interdisciplinary perspective on...)
This book offers a truly interdisciplinary perspective on polymer-based nanometre-sized macrostructures and their use in biology and medicine, with a special concentration on diagnostic and therapeutic applications. A summary of the necessary steps leading to the development and application of a complex-based nanostructure is provided as well as reviews of the main literature in areas covered. The content of the book has high clinical and practical significance and offers a broad overview of this rapidly growing field. The interdisciplinary nature of this title will make it of interest to polymer chemists, pharmacologists, biologists, and clinicians alike.
(This compendium of accounts reveals the unique perspectiv...)
This compendium of accounts reveals the unique perspectives of many scientists who made major contributions to the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of C60 buckminsterfullerene but who have not previously published personal accounts. The introduction attempts to provide a rational framework for understanding how this discovery came about and how firmly it rested on earlier technical breakthroughs and how important were the contributions of researchers who were young students at the time. In addition to these accounts, most of the key publications are also reprinted. More than anything else, this book gives an in-depth overview of how important cross-disciplinary advances from laboratory synthesis, molecular spectroscopy, radioastronomy, stellar chemistry, and cluster chemistry were in the discovery. Indeed, the story shows not only how major breakthroughs are often impossible to predict but also that the discovery is a perfect example of the value of fundamental science and why it must continue to be supported.
Sir Harold Walter Kroto, 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 buckminsterfullerene - a soccer-ball-shaped molecule of 60 carbon atoms also known as a buckyball.
Background
Harold Krotoschiner was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, on October 7, 1939, soon after the outset of World War II. The son of refugees from Berlin, he was moved to the town of Bolton with his mother, Edith, a year later while his father, Heinz, was interned on the Isle of Man as an "enemy alien."
After the war, his father became an apprentice engineer and in 1955 opened a factory to make balloons and print faces on them. Around that time, he changed the family name, which is of Silesian origin, to Kroto.
As a boy, Kroto often worked with his father in the factory, doing everything from mixing dyes to fixing machinery. Looking back in his Nobel autobiography, he considered this "an outstanding training ground for the development of the problem-solving skills needed for a research scientist."
Education
Kroto attended the Bolton School, where he became fascinated by chemistry and art.
From 1958 till 1964, Kroto studied chemistry at the University of Sheffield, earning his first-class honors Bachelor of Science degree in 1961, and completed his Doctor of Philosophy there in 1964 with a focus on spectroscopy. As a student, he divided his time between conducting experiments, playing tennis, and designing covers for the student magazine "Arrows."
Taking about his youth, Kroto recalled being a brilliant and very versatile student, "The reports said I was tireless," he told EuroScientist. His interests spanned from Geography to Math and English writing. He jokingly admitted, "I wanted to be a Wimbledon champion but I kept being beaten."
Harry Kroto completed his postdoctoral work in the United States and Canada for three years before returning to England to accept a teaching position at the University of Sussex in 1968.
In 1985, Kroto became a professor. He raised the level of science in Sussex, contributing to various aspects of research and education at the university.
At the same time, Richard Smalley was doing research on cluster chemistry, at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Smalley had been studying clusters of metal atoms with the help of Robert Curl, using an apparatus Smalley had in his laboratory. This laser-supersonic cluster beam apparatus had the ability to vaporize nearly any known material into plasma using a laser, which is a highly concentrated beam of light with extremely high energy.
Through an acquaintance with Curl, Kroto contacted Smalley and discussed the possibility of using his apparatus to recreate the high-heat conditions of a red giant’s atmosphere in order to study the clusters of carbon produced, which might give Kroto insight as to the formation of the carbon chains. Smalley conceded and Kroto arrived in Smalley’s laboratory at Rice University on September 1, 1985, whom began working on the experiment along with graduate students J.R. Heath and S.C. O’Brien.
Kroto and his colleagues found that clusters of 60 carbon atoms, C60, were the most abundant and stable, suggesting a symmetrical structure. They proposed that C60 was a "truncated icosahedron cage," a football-shaped polyhedron with 20 hexagonal surfaces and 12 pentagonal surfaces, the same structure as the geodesic dome designed by the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller for the 1967 Montreal World Exhibition. The researchers duly named the newly discovered structure buckminsterfullerene.
Absolute confirmation of these structures came five years later, when physicists Don Huffman and Wolfgang Krätschmer and their groups worked out how to make C60 in bulk. Today, the buckyball is a crucial component of solar cells.
In 1996, Harry Kroto received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Richard Smalley and Robert Curl for their discovery of buckminsterfullerene.
"Winning the Nobel was a beautiful achievement," said Kroto. "But no scientist can ever really dream of being handed that card." Still, he added, "I've never been a guy who had a great regard for my own ability. We found something that was really a backburner discovery that turned out to be something. It doesn't mean I'm the cleverest guy, though."
Kroto was a Fellow of The Royal Society and was a Royal Society Research Professor. He also received many other honors, including the Copley Medal of The Royal Society. He was knighted in 1996. He has also received several honorary degrees: Honorary doctorates of Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), University of Stockholm (Sweden), University of Limburg (Belgium), University of Sheffield, University of Kingston, and many others. In 2004, he returned an honorary degree to the University of Exeter in protest at the closure of their chemistry department. He was a supporter of Amnesty International and the British Humanist Association.
In 2004, he left Sussex to take up a chair at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Science communication was one of his main missions, particularly in the last few years of his life. Harry’s interest in science communication for the younger generation as well as for common citizens was contagious. He was partly responsible for the creation of Geoset and the Vega Science Trust to produce science films for television. Harry was also outspoken on many issues related to society and humanity.
Sir Harry Kroto was an outspoken member of the chemistry research community.
He has received several awards including honourary degrees. In 1996, he was awarded the Nobel Chemistry Prize for discovering a new form of carbon, known as "buckminsterfullerene," which stands alongside the two other well-defined forms, diamond and graphite.
Kroto was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1996 New Year Honours list.
He has set up two influential science education organizations: Vega Science Trust and Geoset.
The University of Sheffield North Campus contains two buildings named after Harry Kroto: The Kroto Innovation Centre and the Kroto Research Institute.
(This book offers a truly interdisciplinary perspective on...)
2010
Religion
Kroto rejoiced in calling himself a "devout atheist," confessing that he was "bewildered" by people who still believed in God. "However," he explained, "I can see that the promise of infinite immortality is a more palatable proposition than the absolute certainty of finite mortality which those of us who are subject to free thought (as opposed to free will) have to look forward to, and many may not have the strength of character to accept it."
In 2010, he was one of more than 50 signatories (including Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins) to a letter to The Guardian protesting that Pope Benedict XVI should not be given the "honour" of a state visit.
One of Harry Kroto's favorite quotes was: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings," said by Albert Einstein.
Politics
This quote of Harry Kroto shines a spotlight on his political views: "...I have very serious personal problems when confronted by individuals, organizations, and regimes which do not accept that these freedoms are fundamental human rights. I feel one must oppose those who claim that the 'good' of the community must come before that of the individual - this claim is invariably used to justify oppression by the state. Furthermore, there has never been any consensus on what the 'good' of the community actually consists of, whereas for individuals there is little difficulty. Thus I am a supporter of Amnesty International, a humanist and an atheist. I believe in a secular, democratic society in which women and men have total equality, and individuals can pursue their lives as they wish, free of constraints - religious or otherwise. I feel that the difficult ethical and social problems which invariably arise must be solved, as best they can, by discussion and am opposed to the crude simplistic application of dogmatic rules invented in past millennia and ascribed to a plethora of mystical creators - or the latest invention; a single creator masquerading under a plethora of pseudonyms."
Views
Harry Kroto was studying strange chains of carbon atoms found in space through microwave spectroscopy, a science that studies the absorption spectra of stellar particles billions of kilometers away to identify what compounds are found in space. This is possible because every element radiates a specific frequency of light that is unique to that element, which can be observed using radiotelescopes. The elements can then be identified because a fundamental rule of matter stating that the intrinsic properties of elements apply throughout the universe, which means that the elements will emit the same frequency regardless of where they are found in the universe. Kroto took spectroscopic readings near carbon-rich red giants, or old stars with very large radii and relatively low surface temperatures, and compared them to spectrum lines of well-characterized substances. He identified the dust to be made of long alternating chains of carbon and nitrogen atoms known as cynopolyynes, which are also found in interstellar clouds. Kroto believed that the chains were formed in the stellar atmospheres of red giants and not in interstellar clouds, but he had to study the particles more closely.
Kroto continued his studies in collaboration with Smalley and Curl. Smalley’s apparatus fires a high energy laser beam at a rotating disk of graphite in a helium-filled vacuum chamber. Helium is used because it is an inert gas and therefore does not react with the gaseous carbon. The intense heating of the surface of the graphite breaks the C—C bonds because of the intense energy. Once vaporized, the carbon atoms cool and condense in the high-pressure helium gas, colliding and forming new bond arrangements. Immediately upon cooling several degrees above absolute zero in a chamber, the carbon leads to a mass spectrometer for further analysis.
A mass spectrometer uses an atom or molecule’s weight and electric charge to separate it from other molecules. This is done by ionizing the molecules, which is done by bombarding the molecules with high energy electrons which then knocks off electrons. If an electron is removed from an otherwise neutral molecule, then the molecule becomes a positively charged ion or cation. The charged particles are then accelerated by passing through electric plates and then filtered through a slit. A stream of charged particles exits the slit and is then deflected by a magnetic field into a curved path. Because all the particles have a charge of +1, the magnetic field exerts the same amount of force on them, however, the more massive ions are deflected less, and thus a separation occurs. By adjusting the strength of the accelerating electric plates or the deflecting magnetic field, a specific mass can be selected to enter the receptor on the end. After adjusting the experiment, it became greatly evident that the most dominant molecule measured was 720 amu (atomic mass units). By dividing this number by the mass of a single carbon atom (12 amu), it was deduced that the molecule was comprised of 60 carbon atoms (720/12 = 60).
The next task was to develop a model for the structure of C60, this new allotrope of carbon. Because it was overwhelmingly dominant, Smalley reasoned the molecule had to be very stable. The preferred geometry for a stable molecule would reasonably be spherical because this would mean that all bonding capabilities for carbon would be satisfied. If it were a chain or sheet like graphite, the carbon atoms could still bond at the ends, but if it were circular all ends would meet. Another hint as to the arrangement of the molecule was that there must be a high degree of symmetry for a molecule as stable as C60. Constructing a model that satisfied these requirements was fairly difficult and the group of scientists experimented with several models before coming to a conclusion. As a last resort, Smalley made a paper model by cutting out paper pentagons and hexagons in which he tried to stick them together so that the figure had 60 vertices. Smalley found that he create a sphere made out of 12 pentagons interlocking 20 hexagons to make a ball. The ball even bounced. To ensure that the shape fulfilled the bonding capabilities of carbon, Kroto and Curl added sticky labels to represent double bonds. The resulting shape is that of a truncated icosahedron, the same as that of a soccer ball. Smalley, Curl, and Kroto named the molecule buckminsterfullerene after the American architect and engineer Richard Buckminster Fuller who used hexagons and pentagons for the basic design of his geodesic domes.
Quotations:
"To be a scientist is to be fascinated by the Universe, to have the same attitude as that of a child."
"Scientists have a responsibility, or at least I feel I have a responsibility, to ensure that what I do is for the benefit of the human race. It is important that we try to point out facts to help those in power to make decisions. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. Although knowledge cannot guarantee good decisions, common sense suggests that wisdom is an unlikely consequence of ignorance."
"The humanitarian philosophies that have been developed (sometimes under some religious banner and invariably in the face of religious opposition) are human inventions, as the name implies - and our species deserves the credit. I am a devout atheist - nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator."
"There are as many ways to do science as there are scientists and thus when funds are scarce good scientists have to be supported even if they do not know where their studies are leading."
"My advice is to do something which interests you or which you enjoy and do it to the absolute best of your ability. If it interests you, however mundane it might seem on the surface, still explore it because something unexpected often turns up just when you least expect it. With this recipe, whatever your limitations, you will almost certainly still do better than anyone else."
Membership
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
2007
Academy of Sciences
,
Torino
2005
The Royal Society
1990
Mexican Academy of Science
1993
Korean Academy of Science and Technology
1997
The Royal Microscopical Society
1998
The Royal Society of Edinburgh
1998
2000 - Honorary Fellow;
2002-2004 - President
The Royal Society of Chemistry
Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
2003
Amnesty International
Personality
Harry Kroto was a great communicator and a showman and gave wonderful lectures to children. He had an impish sense of humor similar to that of the British comedy group Monty Python, which he greatly admired.
Quotes from others about the person
Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt: "Harry very much became the embodiment of the hopes of Alfred Nobel, with a better, more peaceful world being brought about through the dissemination of science. He had very high ideals, and challenged everyone he engaged to discover what their own ideals are, and to become better people."
Jonathan Hare: "I always think of Harry as like a detective - he's interested if there's something he doesn't understand. Most of us, if we see something we don't understand, we back away a bit. He gets excited meeting something he doesn't understand."
Huffman: "He's a visionary scientist. He's a terrific spokesman for science. He was a great teacher of his grad students, but after C60, a marvelous teacher of the general non-scientific population - and children. He's just a good person."
Interests
graphic art
Writers
Richard Feynman (Quantum Electro Dynamics Physics), The Brothers Karamazov
Artists
Brad Holland, Paul Madonna, Michael Schwab
Sport & Clubs
tennis
Music & Bands
3rd Movement of Symphony No4 in G Major by Gustav Mahler
Connections
In 1963, Harry Kroto got married to Margaret Hunter. They had two sons: David and Stephen.
