Articles
A selection of published articles and blogs written about or by Sir Harry Kroto.
- Creative giant - legendary educator Harold Kroto looks back on ten remarkable years at FSU (PDF, 419KB), SPECTRUM, FSU magazine.
- Florida standards support evolution - with a twist (PDF, 93KB), Florida Standards, science magazine.
- 'Scientometric portrait of Nobel Laureate Harold W Kroto' (PDF, 2.69MB) B S Kademani, V L Kalyane and V Kumar, SRELS Journal of Information Management.
- Sir Harold Walter Kroto, Encyclopedia of World Biography.
- Sir Harry Kroto demonstrates the GooYouWiki-World at Café Scientifique (PDF, 121KB), Interfaces.
- Harold Kroto story (PDF, 94KB), Oregon.
- The wrecking of British science, The Guardian.
- Harry Kroto: From light years to nanometres – and back, Chemistry World.
- Professor Sir Harold Kroto FRS, Humanists UK.
- Stephen Hawking reveals new award for science communication, Science 2.0.
- Harry Kroto (PDF, 130KB), Education.
- A story about an almost extinct species – left field science by Harold Kroto (PDF, 576KB), Chemistry in New Zealand.
- FSU C60 research (PDF, 341KB), National Science Foundation.
- Nobel prize chemist joins the brain drain (PDF, 60KB), The Telegraph.
- Harold Kroto contemplates applications of Nobel-winning fullerenes, The Scientist.
- Forget about the prizes, Nobel winners advise young scientists in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
- Busting the 'genius' myth, Huffington Post.
- A beautiful, peculiar molecule, News at Northeastern.
- Hanging out with Nobel prize winner Sir Harold Kroto, Scientific American.
- Nobel-winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto on science education and creativity, Asian Scientist.
- Nobelist Kroto: What's the evidence for what you accept? Scientific American.
- Dedicated followers of fashion, Chemistry World.
- Ordering the best appetizer platter; Harry Kroto’s many passions, Science Blogs.
- Education: Passed/Failed Sir Harry Kroto FRS, Independent.
- 59th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (Chemistry), School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin.
- Learning from the Laureates: Harold Kroto's presentation tips, SciBlogs.
- Cross-disciplinary fundamental research - the seed for scientific advance
and technological innovation (PDF, 1.31MB), Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. - Takeshi Oka at NRC (PDF, 189KB), an article written in honour of Sir Harry Kroto's close friend, colleague and co-researcher Takeshi Oka, with whom he discovered the long carbon chains in interstellar space.
- A set of opinion articles written for the Times Higher Educational Supplement (THES) in 2003-04.
- Lack of toys (PDF, 12KB)
- "Jaws" was attacking my bumper (PDF, 17KB)
- I love quotations (PDF, 16KB)
- Tony Blair (PDF, 12KB)
- Key to learning (PDF, 17KB)
- Sir John Cornforth (‘Kappa’): Some personal recollections (PDF, 219KB) by Harry Kroto, Research Front.
- Starmus: a festival of the stars, The Irish Times.
- Scientists offer new understanding how metallofullerene is formed, nanowerk.
- How to succeed in science: Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting, day 4, Scientific American.
- Professor Tom Welton plots a course for Natural Sciences at Imperial, Imperial College London.
- Has the imagination disappeared from Lego? BBC News.
- Living with voices inside your head, Scientific American.
- Art and science: ‘two cultures’ with shared values, Times Higher Education.
- Nobel prize winner in Welwyn Garden City, Welwyn Hatfield Times.
- Natural intuitions of science and art, New Scientist.
- Geodesic dome, Connections in space.
- Lindau Nobel Laureate 2011 – coverage roundup midweek, of schemes and memes, Nature blogs.
- Lindau Nobel Meeting - Buckminsterfullerene and the third man, Scientific American.
- Sir Harold Kroto – Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2011, Lindau Nobel community, uninteresting things blog.
- Nobel prize winners are put to the task of drawing their discoveries, Smithsonian magazine.
- The Virtual Revolution episode 4 - Homo Interneticus? BBC.
A statement in the comments:
"Well Theodore Vale arrived at the “network effect” based on telephone wiring. Here’s the thing: we are now in the era of freely rotating satellites. Our connections and communications are actually no longer bound by cabling on telegraph polls alone and it doesn’t matter how many nodes each line traverses.
"Who is to say that having to cross one node / line to get to another node / line is the optimal way of connecting — whether that’s a connection of ideas, of individuals, etc.
"The architecture for the Global Brain is unlikely to resemble Vale’s network. It’s more likely to be inspired by Crick & Watson and Kroto & Buckminster Fuller."
- C60-Buckminsterfullerene: Not just a Pretty Molecule, Lindau 1998 blog
A statement in the comments:
"Amongst the Nobel Laureates lecturing in Lindau, Sir Harold Kroto would probably earn the award for the most unusual and characteristic way of presenting. This lecture, which is the first he ever gave in Lindau, is no exception. Kroto`s way of presenting relies on a quick succession of, sometimes loosely connected, images, which are, in a most creative fashion, gathered from the spheres of history, arts, science, society etc. This brings about a relaxed and – at the same time – enriched and intense atmosphere, which is usually highly appreciated by the Lindau audiences.
"Unfortunately, there is no video available for this particular lecture and thus a great deal of the unique “Harry Kroto spirit” is lost. Still, the lecture is special, because it is not only the first Lindau lecture Kroto gave after receiving the Nobel Prize, but also the last he gave so far (2012) on the subject of his Nobel Prize research.In later years, Kroto gave preference to more general subjects such as creativity or science, society and sustainability.
"Kroto and his co-recipients Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard F. Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for their discovery of fullerenes”. Fullerenes are ball-shaped molecules built exclusively from carbon. The most famous fullerene, the Buckminster fullerene (sometimes also referred to as C60), contains 60 carbon atoms and looks pretty much like a football. The fullerenes were so exciting to the scientific community (and the Nobel Committee) because they represented a new modification of carbon, which is distinctly different to the well-known graphite and diamond modifications.
"Due to the fundamental importance of carbon in almost all processes of life as well as in materials science, it could be expected that the advent of the fullerenes would entail a horn of plenty of potential technical applications. This excitement was stimulated further, when traces of fullerenes were detected in space.
"However, as far as we know today, the enthusiasm was probably excessive. More than 25 years after the discovery of fullerenes, there are still no major technical applications, or, as Robert Curl put it in his 1998 Lindau talk: "the discoverers are still waiting for their kid to get a job".
"Today, new carbon modifications, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene (Nobel Prize in Physics 2010), which might well be considered advancements of fullerene research, have taken over the role of hope bearers in the field of carbon-only materials.
"In the present talk, Kroto uses his characteristic presentation style to blend historical snippets with details on his own scientific background, anecdotes on fullerene research as well as some brief notes on the fullerenes’ chemical properties. The breadth of his point of view might be estimated from two of the quotes he uses.
"The first one, given in a rather ironic context, is attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato, 360 BC: “In the first place it is clear to everyone that fire, earth, water and air are bodies and all bodies are solids and all solids again are bounded by surfaces and all rectiliniar surfaces are composed of triangles.”
"The second one comes straight from a Lord of the Rings bumper sticker and is used by Kroto to make an argument in favour of fundamental science: “Not all those who wander are lost.” The author of this comment could not agree more. David Siegel."