Kroto is now one of several prestigious individuals, including
the groundbreaking Chemist Linus Pauling, who have enriched the
Linfield community at an Oregon Nobel Laureate Symposium. “The
lecture-symposium was scheduled two years ago,” Director of
Communications Mardi Mileham. She mentioned that Kroto was
selected to participate in the symposium by Dr. Fred Ross who
retired from Linfield last spring. Kroto is well-known for the
co-discovery of the form of carbon now known as
Buckminsterfullerene, or, “buckyballs” in 1985. This molecule is
a spherical arrangement of 60 carbons in a pattern that
resembles the stitching on soccer balls. Up until its discovery,
only two stable forms of carbon, graphite and diamond, were
known to exist, Professor of Chemistry Thomas Reinert said. He
said this third stable form of carbon changed the way chemists
thought about carbon and the bonds between atoms. Chemists
learned that this form of carbon occurs in the universe,
naturally. “It’s not just made up in a lab,” Reinert s