30 Facts About Harry Kroto

Harry Kroto shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes.

Harry Kroto was the recipient of many other honors and awards.

Harry Kroto ended his career as the Francis Eppes Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University, which he joined in 2004.

Harry Kroto promoted science education and was a critic of religious faith.

Harry Kroto was raised in Bolton while the British authorities interned his father on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien during World War II.

Harry Kroto attended Bolton School, where he was a contemporary of the actor Ian McKellen.

Harry Kroto developed an interest in chemistry, physics, and mathematics in secondary school, and because his sixth form chemistry teacher felt that the University of Sheffield had the best chemistry department in the United Kingdom, he went to Sheffield.

Harry Kroto was a humanist who claimed to have three religions: Amnesty Internationalism, atheism, and humour.

Harry Kroto was a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.

In 2015, Harry Kroto signed the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change on the final day of the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

Harry Kroto was educated at Bolton School and went to the University of Sheffield in 1958, where he obtained a first-class honours BSc degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Molecular Spectroscopy.

Harry Kroto started his work with an interest in organic chemistry, but when he learned about spectroscopy it inclined him towards quantum chemistry; he later developed an interest in astrochemistry.

In 1967, Harry Kroto began teaching and research at the University of Sussex in England.

Harry Kroto named the molecule buckminsterfullerene, after Buckminster Fuller who had conceived of the geodesic domes, as the dome concept had provided a clue to the likely structure of the new species.

In 2004, Harry Kroto left the University of Sussex to take up a new position as Francis Eppes Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University.

In 2009, Harry Kroto spearheaded the development of a second science education initiative, Geoset.

Harry Kroto wrote a set of articles, mostly opinion pieces, from 2002 to 2003 for the Times Higher Education Supplement, a weekly UK publication.

From 2002 to 2004, Harry Kroto served as president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Harry Kroto spoke at Auburn University on 29 April 2010, and at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University with Robert Curl on 13 October 2010.

Harry Kroto spoke at Mahatma Gandhi University, at Kottayam, in Kerala, India in January 2011, where he was an 'Erudite' special invited lecturer of the Government of Kerala, from 5 to 11 January 2011.

Harry Kroto spoke at CSICon 2011, a convention "dedicated to scientific inquiry and critical thinking" organized by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in association with Skeptical Inquirer magazine and the Center for Inquiry.

Harry Kroto delivered the IPhO 2012 lecture at the International Physics Olympiad held in Estonia.

In 2014, Harry Kroto spoke at the Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands, delivering a lecture about his life in science, chemistry, and design.

In 1963, Harry Kroto married Margaret Henrietta Hunter, a student of the University of Sheffield at the time.

Harry Kroto was a "devout atheist" who thought that beliefs in immortality derive from lack of the courage to accept human mortality.

Harry Kroto was a patron of the British Humanist Association.

In 2008, Harry Kroto was critical of Michael Reiss for directing the teaching of creationism alongside evolution.

Harry Kroto praised the increase of organized online information as an "Educational Revolution" and named it as the "GooYouWiki" world referring to Google, YouTube and Wikipedia.

Harry Kroto died on 30 April 2016 in Lewes, East Sussex, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 76.

Harry Kroto was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1996 New Year Honours list.