Everything about Sir Harry Kroto totally explained
Sir Harold (Harry) Walter Kroto,
FRS (born
7 October,
1939) is an
English chemist and one of the 3 recipents to share the 1996
Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He is currently on faculty at
Florida State University, which he joined in 2004, and prior to that he spent a large part of his working career at the
University of Sussex, where he holds an emeritus professorship.
Early life
He was born
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, and 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 Margaret Henrietta Hunter, also a student at the University.
Early work
In 1961 he obtained a first class
BSc honours degree in
chemistry at the
University of Sheffield, followed in 1964 by a
PhD 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as making the first phosphaalkenes (compounds with carbon phosphorus double bonds), his doctoral studies included some unpublished research on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 C
60 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 existence of the C
60 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.
He attended and was a speaker at the symposia in 2006 and 2007.
He awarded Richard Strutt the King Edward VI College VIth Form Chemistry Prize 1995.
Further Information
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