science and image Kroto and charisma A vision of a dome led to the naming of buckminsterfullerene. This carbon cluster has become an icon for chemistry, thanks to the media-friendly appeal it shares with co-discoverer Sir Harry Kroto. 8 Martin Kemp ometimes it is difficult to know why particular scientific discoveries hit the Spublic headlines. The hugely technical KEN EWARD/SPL solution to Fermat’s last theorem hardly seemed to possess the ingredients for a hit. It could not even resort to the kind of visual appeal that normally helps to bring a discov- ery before the public eye. By contrast, the popular impact of the ‘buckyball’, C60, unabashedly relied upon visual charisma. The story of the identification, modelling and naming of buckminsterfullerene in 1985 already has the quality of legend — like August Kekulé’s vision of the benzene ring in a dream about a snake biting its tail. Sir Harry Kroto tells how his work at Rice University in Houston, Texas (with a team including Robert Curl and Richard Smalley), led to the identification of the 60-atom cluster of car- bon which exhibited a stability at odds with Molecule of buckminsterfullerene in galactic guise. any graphite-like or diamond-like configura- tion. An architecture was required that closed The suggestion welled up from Kroto’s construct the first paper model of the hypo- off the apparently dangling valencies in any of memory of the geodesic dome designed by thetical structure. the immediately plausible arrangements. the architect and visionary inventor, Buck- A crucial component that Kroto brought minster Fuller, for the American pavilion at to the buckyball team was his natural instinct It was difficult to see how a closed Expo ’67 in Montreal. Kroto also recalled as a designer. Indeed, he had long hankered polygon of hexagons, like a ball of making a Fuller-style cardboard skymap for after a career in graphic design, and, before graphite, could work. The key moment his children in the form of a “stardome”. The the consuming success of C60, planned to came with the introduction of stardome comprised a truncated icosa- found a studio for scientific graphics. He is pentagonal faces (prefigured by Eiji hedron of 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal one of those scientists, like Leonardo and Osawa in 1970), which can effect faces, with 60 vertices. Kepler, naturally drawn to the tangible beau- closure on extended orbs of hexagons On this hunch that pentagons were ty of complex symmetries in works of nature of varied dimensions. involved, Smalley worked into the night to and art. Compared to the initial announcement of C60 and the technical outline of “our some- what speculative structure”, which occupied less than 1.5 columns of dryly laconic prose in Nature, the public broadcasting of the vic- tory of the buckyball team was marked by a H. KROTO, UNIV. SUSSEX UNIV. H. KROTO, hatful of metaphorical goals. Extolling the “cosmic and microcosmic charisma of the soccerball”, Kroto’s 1996 Nobel prize address expressed delight with its ascent to stardom: “This elegant molecule ... has fascinated scientists, delighted lay people, and has infected children with a new enthusiasm for science. And in particular it has given chem- istry a new lease of life.” At present it looks as if the buckyball is to become the kind of modern icon for chem- istry that DNA has become for molecular biology. It also helps, of course, if one or more of the discoverers exhibit a public charisma to match that of the molecule. Martin Kemp is in the Department of the History of Art, University of Oxford, 35 Beaumont Street, Oxford The five-a-side team of buckyball discoverers: (from left) Sean O’Brien, Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, OX1 2PG, UK. Harry Kroto and James Heath. e-mail: [email protected] NATURE | VOL 394 | 30 JULY 1998 429 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998.