Richard Smalley

Today is the birthday of chemist and physicist Richard Smalley, born in Akron, Ohio, in 1943. His spark for science came from the launching of Sputnik in 1957. He received a degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan, worked in industry for several years, and then went to Princeton for his PhD. Smalley’s most famous work came at Rice University, where he had developed a laser-driven instrument that vaporized material and then analyzed the clusters of atoms that formed as the vapor cooled. In 1985 he teamed with Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, and three graduate students to see what would happen to graphite, a common form of carbon. The experiments revealed that some of the cooling carbon clustered into molecules of 60 atoms or more. Later research revealed that these fullerenes, as they’re called, are closed shells resembling soccer balls. The 60-atom fullerenes got the name buckyballs. Smalley, Kroto, and Curl shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Smalley was also a leading advocate of nanotechnology. He was instrumental in the formation of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2000. (Image courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy)

Date in History: 6 June 1943