Chemist, born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, EC England, UK. He studied at the University of Sheffield, moving to the University of Sussex in 1967. He shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996 for his contribution to the discovery of fullerenes (1985). He was president of the Royal Society of Chemistry (20024), and creator of the Vega Science Trust (1994). In 2004, he announced that he was moving to the University of Florida at Tallahassee. He was knighted in 1996.
Sir Harold Walter Kroto KBE, FRS (born 7 October 1939) is an English chemist and one of the winners of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He spent a large part of his working career at the University of Sussex, and is currently on faculty at Florida State University.
Early life
He was born, christened Harold Krotoschiner in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England with his unusual name being of Silesian origin.
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, where he attended Bolton School, where he was a contemporary of the highly acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen. 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.
Early work
In 1961 he took a first class B.
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as making the first phosphaalkenes (compounds with carbon phosphorus double bonds), his doctoral studies included some unpublished research on carbon suboxide, O=C=C=C=O, and this led to a general interest in molecules containing chains of carbon atoms with numerous multiple bonds.
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.
Subsequent work
In the 1970s he launched a research programme at Sussex to look for carbon chains in interstellar space.
The experiment carried out in September 1985 not only proved that carbon stars could produce the chains but revealed an amazing, serendipitous result - the totally unexpected existence of the C60 species.
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.
He presently carries out research in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
Awards and Honours
Kroto was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990, and was awarded a knighthood (becoming Sir Harold Kroto) in 1996.
His alma mater, the University of Sheffield, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1995 at the undergraduate degree congregation.
In 2001, Kroto won the Royal Society's prestigious Michael Faraday Award.
In 2002 he was elected as president of the Royal Society of Chemistry where he is a fellow and served until 2005 in what could be considered as one of the most successful tenures in history.
On 29 November 2004, Kroto announced he was to return his honorary degree from the University of Exeter, in protest over the closure of their Department of Chemistry.
He was awarded the 2004 Copley Medal of the Royal Society.
On 17 June 2005, the University of Surrey conferred an honorary doctorate on him at an undergraduate degree ceremony.
Professor Kroto is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.
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