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Harry Kroto

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Harold Kroto

Sir Harold Walter Kroto KBE, FRS (born 7 October, 1939) is an English chemist and one of the winners of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

He spent a large part of his working career at the University of Sussex, and is currently on faculty at Florida State University.

Early life

He was born, christened Harold Krotoschiner in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England with his unusual name being of Silesian origin. His father's family came from Bojanowo, Poland, and his mother's from Berlin, Germany.

Both his parents were born in Berlin but came to Great Britain in the 1930s as refugees from the Nazis because his father was Jewish.

He was raised in Bolton, Lancashire, England, where he attended Bolton School, where he was a contemporary of the highly acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen. In 1955 the family name was shortened to Kroto.

As a child, he became fascinated by a Meccano set. Kroto credits Meccano — amongst other things — with developing skills useful in scientific research. He was raised Jewish, but the religion never made any sense to him.

He now claims to have four "religions": humanism, atheism, amnesty-internationalism and humourism. 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.

In 1963 he married the former Margaret Henrietta Hunter (now Margaret, Lady Kroto).

Early work

In 1961 he took a first class B. Sc. honours degree in chemistry at the University of Sheffield, followed in 1964 by a Ph. D. at the same institution. His doctoral research involved high-resolution electronic spectra of free radicals produced by flash photolysis (breaking of chemical bonds by light).

Among other things such as making the first phosphaalkenes (compounds with carbon phosphorus double bonds), his doctoral studies included some unpublished research on carbon suboxide, O=C=C=C=O, and this led to a general interest in molecules containing chains of carbon atoms with numerous multiple bonds.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 to quantum chemistry.

After postdoctoral research at the National Research Council in Canada and Bell Laboratories in the USA he began teaching and research at the University of Sussex in England in 1967. He became a full professor in 1985, and a Royal Society Research Professor from 1991 – 2001.

Subsequent work

In the 1970s he launched a research programme at Sussex to look for carbon chains in interstellar space. Earlier studies had detected the molecule cyanoacetylene, H-C≡C-C≡N. Kroto's group searched for spectral evidence of longer similar molecules such as cyanobutadiyne, H-C≡C-C≡C-C≡N and cyanohexatriyne, H-C≡C-C≡C-C≡C-C≡N, and found them from 1975–1978.

Trying to explain them led to the discovery of the C60 molecule. (See buckminsterfullerene.) He heard of laser spectroscopy work being done by Richard Smalley and Robert Curl at Rice University in Texas. He suggested that they should use the Rice apparatus to simulate the carbon chemistry that occurs in the atmosphere of a carbon star.

The experiment carried out in September 1985 not only proved that carbon stars could produce the chains but revealed an amazing, serendipitous result - the totally unexpected existence of the C60 species. The three scientists carried out the work with graduate students Jim Heath (now a full Professor at Caltech), Sean O'Brien (now at Texas Instruments), and Yuan Liu (now at Oak Ridge). The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by Curl, Kroto and Smalley in 1996.

In 1995 he jointly set up the Vega Science Trust a UK educational charity (see www.vega.org.uk) to create high quality science films including lectures, interviews with Nobel Laureates, discussion programmes, careers and teaching resources for TV and Internet Broadcast. Vega has produced some 100 plus programmes of which 50 have been broadcast on BBC TV in the late-night slots all programmes stream for freely from the Vega website which acts as .TV science channel. Viewing figures on terrestrial TV vary from 300,000 to 700,000. The website which is accessed by over 165 countries is designed by Harry Kroto and shows his other main interest - graphic design.

He presently carries out research in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

Awards and Honours

Kroto was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990, and was awarded a knighthood (becoming Sir Harold Kroto) in 1996. Later that year he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

His alma mater, the University of Sheffield, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1995 at the undergraduate degree congregation.

In 2001, Kroto won the Royal Society's prestigious Michael Faraday Award. The award is given annually to a scientist who has done the most to further public communication of science, engineering or technology in the United Kingdom.

In 2002 he was elected as president of the Royal Society of Chemistry where he is a fellow and served until 2005 in what could be considered as one of the most successful tenures in history.

On 29 November, 2004, Kroto announced he was to return his honorary degree from the University of Exeter, in protest over the closure of their Department of Chemistry.

He was awarded the 2004 Copley Medal of the Royal Society.

On 17 June, 2005, the University of Surrey conferred an honorary doctorate on him at an undergraduate degree ceremony. (see [1]) University of Surrey Press Release.

Professor Kroto is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.



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