Richard Errett Smalley

views updated

Richard Errett Smalley

1943-

American chemist who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of fullerenes, which, along with diamond and graphite, are the third form of pure carbon. Fullerenes are circular balls of carbon where the molecules are in a soccer ball-like arrangement. Smalley has gone on to develop nanoscale tubes of carbon molecules with similar arrangements, which may see use in the creation of molecular machines.

More From encyclopedia.com