Richard E. Smalley
Richard Errett Smalley (born June 6, 1943 in Akron , Ohio , † October 28, 2005 in Houston , Texas ) was an American chemist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
Life
Smalley studied chemistry at the University of Michigan ( Bachelor of 1965), Princeton University ( Master's degree in 1971), where he received his PhD in 1973 . From 1965 to 1969 he was a research chemist at Shell and from 1973 to 1976 a researcher at the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago . From 1976 he was Assistant Professor, from 1980 Associate Professor and from 1981 Professor of Chemistry at Rice University in Houston (1990 to 2005 also Professor of Physics). From 1996 to 2001 he was director of the Rice Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology , 2003 to 2005 director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Rice University and 2000 to 2005 chairman of the board of directors of Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc.
In 1996 Smalley, one of the pioneers in the field of nanotechnology, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Robert F. Curl and Harold Kroto for their discovery of fullerenes . The three researchers were honored for their discovery of a new form of the element carbon. Because of the similarity with the domed buildings by the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller , they gave the molecule the name Buckminsterfulleren , which was later also called "bucky balls" in short.
Richard Smalley died of cancer in a clinic. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1990 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1991 . From 1978 to 1980 he was a Sloan Research Fellow . In 1986 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1991 he received the Irving Langmuir Award .
Web links
- Richard Smalley in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1996 award to Richard E. Smalley
- Scientific American obituary ( Memento of November 10, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- Brief CV from the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics (AIP)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Smalley, Richard E. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Smalley, Richard Errett (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American chemist, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1996) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 6, 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Akron , Ohio, USA |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 28, 2005 |
| Place of death | Houston , Texas |