Harold Kroto

In 1985, Harold Kroto, a chemist from Sussex University, was looking at stardust with his Texan colleague Professor Rick Smalley. The two wanted to create brand new materials, and tried to mimic the surface of a star in the lab. For nanoseconds in their lasers, they glimpsed what chemistry said could not exist—a third form of carbon.

Later that year, with their collaborator Robert Curl from Rice University in Houston, Texas, the trio received the Nobel Peace Prize for Chemistry for the discover of C60 Buckminsterfullerene, a new form of carbon. They named their discovery after Buckminster Fuller, the architect who invented geodesic domes. Because its shape is similar to a soccer ball, it later became known as the Buckyball.

Kroto began his academic career at the University of Sussex (Brighton) in 1967. After completing postdoctoral work at the National Research Council in Ottawa and the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, he became a professor in 1985 and a Royal Society research professor in 1991.