Robert Floyed Curl, Jr., Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1966

Robert Floyd Curl, Jr. (born August 23, 1933) American organic chemist, is the son of a Methodist Minister is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas and is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Rice University. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996 (jointly with Sir Harold Kroto & Richard E. Smalley, "for their discovery of fullerenes".

He studied at Rice University and the University of California at Berkeley, and in 1985 he was a co-discoverer of fullerenes, a sixty-atom form of carbon (C60) that is molecularly distinct from the other carbons, diamond and graphite. C60's atoms are arranged in hexagons and pentagons reminiscent of R. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, and are named buckminsterfullerenes (or more informally, "buckyballs") in his honor. Curl shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the co-discoverers of fullerenes, his colleague at Rice University, Richard E. Smalley, and a more distant collaborator at the University of Sussex, Sir Harold Kroto. Since conducting his Nobel Prizewinning work, his more recent research has focused on DNA genotyping and sequencing instrumentation, environmental monitoring, free radicals, gas phase chemical kinetics, and infrared laser spectroscopy.

Honors:

• IME James Clayton Prize 1957 (with Kenneth S. Pitzer)
• EGU Alexander von Humboldt Medal 1972
• APS International Prize for New Materials Research 1992 (with Harold Kroto and R. E. Smalley)
• Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1996 (with Sir Harold Kroto and Richard E. Smalley)
• Fellow - American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow - European Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
• Fellow - National Academy of Sciences

See also: "Robert F. Curl Jr. - Autobiography". Nobelprize.org.