Richard Smalley
Richard Smalley
Richard Errett Smalleywas the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. In 1996, along with Robert Curl, also a professor of chemistry at Rice, and Harold Kroto, a professor at the University of Sussex, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of a new form of carbon, buckminsterfullerene, also known as buckyballs. He was an advocate of nanotechnology and its applications...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth6 June 1943
CountryUnited States of America
I was born in Akron, Ohio, on June 6, 1943, one year to the day before D-Day, the allied invasion at Normandy. The youngest of four children, I was brought up in a wonderfully stable, loving family of strong Midwestern values.
Administrators and scientists are excited by buckyballs for their own sake, and if they turn out to have practical applications, so much the better.
We'd like to make it [bucky fiber] in a continuous fiber, roll it on a drum, and go fishing with it.
Until late in life, I was never quite good enough for my father, and I suppose that is part of what drives me even now, well after his death in 1992.