Robert Floyd Curl Jr.
Curl, Robert Floyd, Jr. (1933-) is an American chemist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with British chemist Harold Kroto and American chemist Richard Errett Smalley. They were honored for their discovery of fullerenes, new forms of the element carbon.
Curl's father was a Methodist minister. At age 9, Curl was given a chemistry set. From that time on, he knew he wanted to become a chemist. He attended Rice Institute in Houston, and then obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1957 from the University of California at Berkeley.
After serving as a research fellow at Harvard University, Curl joined the faculty of Rice University in 1958 as an assistant professor. He then became full professor in 1967.
In 1971, Curl began work in laser spectroscopy. He persuaded his colleague, Smalley, to study atomic carbon clusters, a project that Kroto had proposed. In 1985, Kroto joined Curl and Smalley at Rice. Their collaboration led to the discovery of fullerenes, new forms of the element carbon. Fullerenes are made up of 60 atoms arranged in closed shells with a cagelike structure that is similar to a geodesic dome. The number of carbon atoms in the shells can vary, and many new carbon structures have been identified. Before this discovery, only six crystalline forms of carbon were known.
In reference to architect Buckminster Fuller, who designed the geodesic dome, the scientists named the molecules buckminsterfullerenes, later called fullerenes and nicknamed “buckyballs.” For their discovery of fullerenes, the three scientists shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Fullerenes now are manufactured and used for strong but lightweight materials, computer semiconductors, solar cells, and superconductors. They can also be modified to block a step in the reproduction of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS.