Robert Curl
Robert Floyd Curl, Jr. (born August 23, 1933) is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Rice University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for the discovery of the nanomaterial buckminsterfullerene, along with Richard Smalley also of Rice University, and Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex.
Early life
Born in Alice, Texas, United States, Curl was the son of a Methodist minister. Due to his father's missionary work, his family moved several times within southern and southwestern Texas, and the elder Curl was involved in starting the San Antonio Medical Center's Methodist Hospital. Curl attributes his interest in chemistry to a chemistry set he received as a nine-year-old, recalling that he ruined the finish on his mother's porcelain stove when nitric acid boiled over onto it. He is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas. His high school offered only one year of chemistry instruction, but in his senior year his chemistry teacher gave him special projects to work on.
