By Dan Nonte , University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted: 2-15-08
GREENSBORO, NC – Nobel laureate Sir Harold Kroto will speak about nanotechnology and sustainability at Greensboro’s two state universities, North Carolina A&T State University and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 27-28.
Kroto and two other researchers received the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for discovering a spherical carbon molecule. They named it buckminsterfullerene – “buckeyball” for short – in honor of the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the similarly shaped geodesic dome. Buckeyballs and related carbon structures, collectively known as fullerenes, have potential applications in nanotechnology ranging from superconductors to pharmaceuticals.
The following speeches and events are free and open to the public:
• 1-2 p.m. Feb. 27, Jaylee M. Mead Auditorium (Room 101), UNCG Science Building, “Mechanisms of Nanostructure Assembly;”
• 7:30-9 p.m. Feb. 27, also Mead Auditorium, Science Building, “Science, Society and Sustainability” presentation followed by a public reception;
• 9-10 a.m. Feb. 28, N.C. A&T New Science Building Room 200, “Architecture in Nanospace” presentation
• 4-5:30 p.m. Feb. 28, N.C. A&T Memorial Student Union’s Stallings Ballroom, public reception.
The UNCG Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is sponsoring Kroto's speeches at UNCG. His evening lecture Feb. 27 is the first in the UNCG Science and Society Lecture Series.
The N.C. A&T Department of Chemistry is sponsoring Kroto’s Feb. 28 speech, which is part of the department’s second annual chemical sciences symposium, “Forging New Bonds.”
The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, a partnership between N.C. A&T and UNCG, is sponsoring public receptions at both universities in Kroto’s honor. The joint school will be based at the South Campus of Gateway University Research Park and is in the process of hiring a founding dean. The N.C. General Assembly has committed $58 million to the school.
At the time of the buckeyball discovery, Kroto was a professor at the University of Sussex. His research partners, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, were at Rice University. A native of Wisbech, England, Kroto was knighted in 1996.
On the subject of sustainability, Kroto says that science, engineering and technology have vastly improved the quality of life in the developed world, but have also catalyzed a plundering of the earth’s resources. Every segment of society should consider sustainability the greatest challenge the world has ever faced, he says. In addition to other steps, he says, the power of the internet must be harnessed to educate people around the world about the threat we face.
Kroto is currently chairman of the board of the Vega Science Trust, which produces science programs for network television. Seventy five of these programs have been made so far, and 55 have been broadcast on the BBC.
An outspoken advocate for science education, Kroto wrote the following in 1996 in an autobiographical essay, which has been published by the Nobel Foundation in its annual series of books, “Les Prix Nobel”:
“I, like almost all chemists I know, was also attracted by the smells and bangs that endowed chemistry with that slight but charismatic element of danger which is now banned from the classroom. I agree with those of us who feel that the wimpish chemistry training that schools are now forced to adopt is one possible reason that chemistry is no longer attracting as many talented and adventurous youngsters as it once did. If the decline in hands-on science education is not redressed, I doubt that we shall survive the 21st century. "
