Goodbye my friend

I shall miss you with all my heart. You smiled when you were happy, you smiled when you were angry, you smiled when you were tired, you smiled when you were everywhere.

You were there with me when Challenger exploded, when I was frustrated and lonely, when I could not care less about carbon, when I was successful and enthusiastic about buckyballs. You told me my career had peaked when I was 23 years old.  I think you were right.

Harry Kroto was one of the greatest scientists in history because he understood joy and connected it to science better than anyone I have ever met.  He laughed and smiled at all things science.

It is with the utmost respect that I must sadly report that Harry has gone to meet his maker (or maybe not), he is pushing up daisies, he has joined the choir invisible.  Sir Harold Walter Kroto, FRS is an ex-chemist.

Harry Kroto and Stephen Hawking

I wish I could have been there to see them together.

Buckyballs in Space

Well it's not scifi but it's still great. As we predicted in 1985, buckyballs have been found in outer space.

It's not a big surprise, but it's a great 25th anniversary present. Here are the data:

In 1986 Rick Smalley asked me if I thought that c60 could be the primordial nucleation site for planetary coalescence. He theorized that c60 could survive the extreme UV of the interstellar environment. No other molecule could survive to become a nucleation site.