Discovering the fullerenes

It is a thrill for me to be here today and to be the first of three speakers discussing the wonders of the fullerenes, an infinite new class of carbon molecules. My colleagues in this famous photograph (Fig. 1) are also thrilled to be here in Stockholm this week to see ‘‘Bucky get the Prize.’’ This picture was taken on September 11, 1985, the day before we sent off the manuscript describing the discovery of C60 to the editorial offices of Nature (Kroto, Heath, O’Brien, Curl, and Smalley, 1985) and only a few days after the discovery itself. Every one of the people in that photograph was critically involved in the discovery (with the exception of the one woman walking in the back—we still don’t know who that mystery woman was), so you can understand that there is also some sadness in our hearts today. While the chemistry prize this year is for the discovery of the fullerenes, it is given to individuals, and this individual honor can be shared by no more than three. The Nobel committee has done as well as they possibly can with this problem. We understand. But the sadness remains. On the other hand, there are positive aspects to the limit of three. For example, I have asked what happens in those years when there is only one person receiving an award in physics or chemistry. I was told that you just get one lecture for that prize. Now that I am beginning to appreciate the full impact of having a long lecture from each of the three winners this year in each of the two fields, physics and chemistry, all on the same day and in the same room, I can see that one must set limits somewhere. This discovery was one of the most spiritual experiences that any of us in the original team of five have ever experienced. The main message of my talk today is that this spiritual experience, this discovery of what Nature has in store for us with carbon, is still ongoing. So the title of my talk is not ‘‘The Discovery of the Fullerenes’’ but rather ‘‘Discovering the Fullerenes.’’ Fullerene researchers worldwide are still engaged in this process of discovery. The sense in which we are still in this process has to do with what the true essence of the 1985 fullerene discovery actually turned out to be. After all, the five people in that happy photograph (Fig. 1), brilliant as they all are, were not the ones who first conceived of the truncated icosahedron. That was done several thousand