Harry Kroto was a chemist who, with American colleagues, discovered a new form of carbon that he termed Buckminsterfullerene or ‘buckyball’. They generated this C₆₀ molecule by vaporising graphite and proposed its football-like structure. In 1996, Harry was knighted for services to chemistry, and later that year he and his US colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The discovery arose from his earlier finding with Sussex and Canadian colleagues that long carbon chains were abundant in space and some red giant stars. Work on new thiocarbonyl molecules was followed by studies with Sussex colleagues to create the first phosphaalkenes and phosphaalkynes — molecules containing phosphorus–carbon double and triple bonds, which they detected by microwave.

Harry also used television and the Internet to enrich science education both in general and in schools, setting up the Vega Science Trust and GEOSET, the Global Educational Outreach for Science Engineering and Technology initiative. He was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 2002–2004, and was a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Sir Harold Kroto FRS died on 30 April 2016.

Biographical Memoir