Rice chemistry professor Robert F. Curl Jr. and many others discovered surprise readings on the spectrometer: proof of 60 carbon atoms bonding jointly, probably in a hollow cluster shaped some thing like a soccer ball. Dr. Curl painstakingly went by means of the benefits.
It all checked out, Dr. Curl concluded. Abruptly, new frontiers in actual physical chemistry and nanotechnology have been thrown open up. They named the discovery soon after the geodesic domes (imagine Epcot) of architect and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller: buckminsterfullerenes, or buckyballs for brief.
Dr. Curl and two colleagues, Richard Smalley from Rice and Harry Kroto from England’s University of Sussex, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1996. And buckyballs turned famed as a type of Swiss Army knife of the molecular realm — with opportunity programs ranging from vessels for hydrogen gas storage to paint-on photo voltaic panels to extremely-sturdy armor. It was also adopted as the identify of a magnetic office environment toy.
Dr. Curl died July 3 in Houston at age 88 after a 6-decade career at Rice, the college stated in a statement. No lead to was provided.
“Bob was our coverage plan,” stated James Heath, president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and 1 of the graduate students concerned in the 1985 experiments. “We have been all psyched, but he checked each individual depth ahead of we could announce everything. He produced certain what seemed fascinating was not actually boring.”
Robert Floyd Curl Jr. was born in Alice, Tex., on Aug. 23, 1933, son of a Methodist minister whose work took the household hopscotching all around Texas. His father also helped establish Methodist Clinic in San Antonio.
When Mr. Curl was 9, his mom and dad purchased him a chemistry established for Christmas. “Within a 7 days, I experienced resolved to grow to be a chemist,” he wrote in an autobiographic sketch for the Nobel Basis.
There were no chemistry lessons at his elementary school in Texas. He dabbled on his personal, creating points that sizzled, oozed and exploded. One of his superior college academics gave him exclusive science jobs to keep up with his growing interests.
Right after graduating in 1954 from what was then Rice Institute, he obtained a doctorate in chemistry from the College of California at Berkeley in 1957 and went to Harvard University for postdoctoral get the job done on molecular bonds. He then joined the Rice college, ultimately chairing the chemistry division. He held the title of professor emeritus adhering to his retirement in 2008, at 74.
As a youthful assistant professor, Dr. Curl commenced experiments on semiconductors applying a laser-and-vacuum equipment in Smalley’s lab. Dr. Curl then prompt his mate Kroto appear from Britain to use the lab for his perform, making an attempt to re-produce unusual carbon chains recognized by radio astronomy in interstellar clouds and pink giants, outdated stars with relatively reduced surface area temperatures.
That is how “we got into the carbon enterprise,” Dr. Curl recalled in a 2016 Rice Information job interview.
The thought of carbon arranging itself in molecular structures, such as spheres or tubes, had been component of scientific inquiry and theories for many years. It wasn’t proved until the unanticipated findings from the Rice experiments. The preliminary work was published in Mother nature in a manuscript, “C60 Buckminsterfullerene.” (C60 refers to the 60 carbon atoms arrayed in 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.)
At the time, carbon was considered to exist in just a few types: soot or coal, graphite and diamond.
“No 1 experienced at any time heard of spherical carbon just before,” Heath said.
It also laid established a new class for nanotechnology, earning innovative supplies and units at a near-atomic scale. The energy and stability of buckyballs — in 60-atom type and even larger — has presented dozens of possible uses since of their shape and electron-bonding attributes.
Buckyballs have identified applications in ultrasmall mild-emitting diodes and solar cells. Other investigate moves in many directions: medical utilizes these as antioxidants by siphoning up free of charge radicals mixing with polymers for a achievable paint that collects solar electricity and generates electricity as probable lubricants mainly because of their round condition, or in ultrathin protecting coatings approximately as challenging as diamonds.
The buckyball discovery also was critical in the advancement of nanotubes, effectively graphite rolled into atomic-stage cylinders, used as super-productive pathways for energy and thermal exchange.
Because 1985, buckyball-shaped carbon molecules have been uncovered in mother nature in some historical geological formations, possibly sent by meteors, and in sooty flames. “Think of this the future time you light a candle,” claimed the presentation speech for the Nobel Prize by Lennart Eberson of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In 2015, Rice named the Smalley-Curl Institute in honor of the two Nobel laureates. Of his fellow Nobel winners, Smalley died 2005 and Kroto in 2016.
In new several years, Dr. Curl labored with Rice economists to review subjects these kinds of as power use and how automation impacted the U.S. economic climate.
Survivors consist of his spouse of 66 decades, the former Jonel Whipple of Houston two sons, Michael Curl of Houston and David Curl of Fort Truly worth and a few grandchildren.
“Reporters requested us, ‘Tell us how you manufactured this good discovery,’ ” Dr. Curl informed the Houston Chronicle in 2008. “Well, it was a stroke of luck. The only credit rating you can declare is not ignoring your stroke of luck.”
