Harry Kroto
Sir Harold Kroto Walter KBE ( born October 7, 1939 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire ) is a British chemist with German roots.
For the discovery of fullerenes, a new form of carbon with spherical molecules, he was awarded in 1996 with Robert F. Curl and Richard E. Smalley the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He was close friends with the late Sir Józef Rotblat in August 2005, the only scientists of the Manhattan Project, who got out from this project before the construction of the atomic bomb.
Life
Kroto was born as Harold Krotoschiner. The last name is Silesian origin. The father's family came from Bojanowo, Poland, mother from Berlin. Both parents were born in Berlin and fled in the 30s from the Nazis to England because his father was Jewish. 1955, the name was shortened to Kroto.
He grew up in Bolton, Lancashire then on. He attended the Bolton School, among others, along with the actor Sir Ian McKellen. As a student, he began to be interested in chemistry, physics and mathematics. Upon recommendation of the chemistry teacher Harry Heaney (who later became Professor of Organic Chemistry ), he began to study chemistry in Sheffield.
In 1963 he married Margaret Henrietta Hunter.
Study and work
1961 Kroto received the Bachelor of Science and in 1964 the Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Sheffield. His research during their doctoral studies included high-resolution electron spectra of free radicals by flash photolysis.
He was also involved in the production of the first Phosphoalkene ( compounds with carbon-phosphorus double bonds). Through his (unpublished ) research on carbon suboxide, he began to be interested in molecules with carbon chains and multiple bonds. Originally concerned with organic chemistry, he tended increasingly to quantum chemistry.
After graduation, he worked at the National Research Council in Canada and at Bell Laboratories in the USA. From 1967, he taught and conducted research at the University of Sussex in England. He became Professor in 1985 and was from 1991 to 2001 Royal Society Research Professor.
In the 1970s he began a research program in Sussex to the search of carbon chains in interstellar space; in previous studies was there cyanoacetylene been H -C ≡ C -C ≡ N discovered. His group was 1975-1978 Cyanobutadiin, H -C ≡ C -C ≡ C -C ≡ N, and Cyanohexatriin, H -C ≡ C -C ≡ C -C ≡ C -C ≡ N, spectrally detected.
Together with Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl of Rice University, Texas, he tried to simulate the chemistry of a carbon star. It emerged not only the above -mentioned chain structures, the experiments led in 1985 to the discovery of the C60 molecule ( buckminsterfullerene, see fullerenes ). The three scientists the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for 1996.
Since 2004, Kroto works at Florida State University in Tallahassee and research in the field of nanotechnology.
Since 1995 he works as part of the Vega Science Trust, he co-founded with more than 100 scientific films, which were broadcast by over 50 of the BBC. On the UK site www.vega.org.uk the movies can be downloaded free of charge.