Richard Smalley

Richard Errett Smalley ( born June 6, 1943 in Akron, Ohio; † October 28, 2005 in Houston, Texas ) was an American chemist and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.

Life

Smalley studied chemistry at the University of Michigan (Bachelor 1965), Princeton University ( master's degree, 1971), where he received his doctorate in 1973. 1965 to 1969 he was a research chemist at Shell and 1973-1976 researcher at the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago. He was an Assistant Professor in 1976, Associate Professor in 1980 and as of 1981 professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston (1990 to 2005 professor of physics ). From 1996 to 2001 he was director of Rice 's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, 2003-2005 Director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Rice University from 2000 to 2005 and CEO of Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc.

1996 Smalley, one of the pioneers in the field of nanotechnology, along with Robert F. Curl and Harold Kroto was awarded for the discovery of fullerenes with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Which honors three researchers were for the discovery of a new form of the element carbon. Because of the similarity with the domes of the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, they gave the name Buckminsterfullerene molecule, which was also named in the short form later " bucky balls".

Richard Smalley died in a hospital from cancer. He was since 1990 a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1991 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1991 he received the Irving Langmuir Award.