Sir Harold (Harry) Walter Kroto

Overview:

Sir Harold (Harry) Walter Kroto, KCB, FRS (born 7 October 1939) is an English chemist and one of the three recipients to share the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He is currently on faculty at Florida State University, which he joined in 2004; prior to that he spent a large part of his working career at the University of Sussex, where he holds an emeritus professorship.
In 1961 he obtained a first class BSc honours degree in chemistry at the University of Sheffield, followed in 1964 by a PhD at the same institution. His doctoral research involved high-resolution electronic spectra of free radicals produced by flash photolysis (breaking of chemical bonds by light). After postdoctoral research at the National Research Council in Canada and Bell Laboratories in the USA he began teaching and research at the University of Sussex in England in 1967. He became a full professor in 1985, and a Royal Society Research Professor from 1991 – 2001.
In 1995 he jointly set up the Vega Science Trust a UK educational charity to create high quality science films including lectures, interviews with Nobel Laureates, discussion programmes, careers and teaching resources for TV and Internet Broadcast. Vega has produced some 280 plus programmes of which 50 have been broadcast on BBC TV. Additionally, all programmes stream for free from the Vega website which acts as a TV science channel. Viewing figures on terrestrial TV vary from 300,000 to 700,000. The website which is accessed by over 165 countries is designed by Harry Kroto and shows his other main interest - graphic design.
He presently carries out research in nanoscience and nanotechnology.
He attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposia in 2006 and 2007.