The Birth of the Buckyball

In September of 1985, a group of scientists operating out of a lab in Rice’s Space Sciences Building stumbled upon a strange soccer ball-shaped molecule. Their discovery, made after a whirlwind two weeks of experiments, culminated in a journal article barely two pages long that revolutionized nanotechnology and earned them a Nobel Prize in Chemistry 11 years later. The discovery of C60, also known as Buckminsterfullerene or the “buckyball,” marked a defining moment in scientific history — a testament to the power of collaboration, innovation and the spirit of intellectual curiosity that still resonates as Rice’s School of Natural Sciences celebrates its 50th anniversary.

In the summer of 1984, Sean O’Brien began working as a graduate student in the lab of chemist Richard “Rick” Smalley at Rice. Smalley’s lab, known for its cutting-edge cluster machine, AP2 (pronounced app-two), was a hub of activity. “I started working in the Smalley Lab on his cluster machine, the famous cluster machine was called AP2,” O’Brien recalled, “and at the time, he was exclusively working on metal clusters; there were no semiconductors and no carbon.”

Around this time, another key researcher, Jim Heath, was also starting his first year as a graduate student in the Smalley lab and working extensively on the machinery in the lab. When asked about how the lab began working on carbon experiments, Heath described how “there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm in Rick’s group to do this study, but I actually was interested in it. I thought it could be a fun project.”

This was a singular event in the history of nanotechnology.

—Neal Lane, former Rice provost and White House science advisor

The introduction of carbon into the lab’s research was not a straightforward choice. Heath and O’Brien were initially focused on metal clusters, but everything changed in late August 1985 with the arrival of Harold “Harry” Kroto, a British chemist from the University of Sussex who was a friend of Robert Curl, Smalley’s senior colleague at Rice. Kroto was passionate about carbon clusters and was particularly interested in seeing whether vaporized carbon would condense into clusters consistent with the carbon material observed in interstellar space. Full of enthusiasm for carbon research, he persuaded the Rice team to explore this area.

“This discovery grew out of the union of Richard Smalley’s and my studies of clusters and the apparatus Richard Smalley developed for this purpose with Harold Kroto’s interest in carbon in the interstellar medium,” Curl explained during his speech at the Nobel Banquet in 1996.

Despite initial reluctance, the team began experimenting with carbon under Kroto’s guidance. The breakthrough came when O’Brien’s new nozzle design allowed them to produce carbon clusters in a way that scientists had not been able to before. “The main difference was the nozzle that I had built ... allowed us to find the buckyball and fullerene discovery,” O’Brien explained. Heath worked on this apparatus extensively to create carbon clusters of various sizes, but one cluster, in particular, was remarkable for its stability and ease of creation: C60.

We just knew, ‘This has to be right.’

—Jim Heath

After a week of extensive experiments and deliberation, Smalley, whom Heath described as a scientific “cowboy … an inventor, like Edison,” assembled the team to reveal a cut-out paper model of a soccer ball — the shape of C60. It was a moment of realization for everyone involved. “Once he had that, he knew he had the answer. We all showed up at his office early and he had this cut-out paper model of a buckyball, and we just knew, ‘This has to be right.’” Heath said.

Although they had identified the buckyball, proving its structure to the scientific community was another challenge. The team struggled to produce enough C60 to conduct definitive experiments. “We only had extremely tiny quantities. So we tried what we call indirect structural proofs, and that started off a path of many months, almost a year, of trying to convince people that, ‘Yes, the buckyball structure is correct.’” O’Brien said.

The scientific community was skeptical. The concept of a stable, hollow carbon structure was radical, and many doubted the team’s findings. That was until physicists Wolfgang Krätschmer and Donald Huffman were able to make C60 in bulk, as they published in 1990. It took a while, but “we all ended up being vindicated,” Heath recalled.

The success of the C60 discovery was not just due to the technology and experiments but also the diverse team of scientists who brought different perspectives to the table. In his Nobel Lecture, Smalley shared his appreciation for the unique contributions each member brought to the team. “With Bob Curl in our collaboration on semiconductor clusters, we had evolved one of the most intellectually demanding and penetrating styles of research I have ever witnessed in any research group,” he said. “Sean O’Brien had evolved just the right version of the cluster nozzle … and Jim Heath had developed an amazing talent for making ‘science happen’ on the machine. When Harry Kroto came, his intensity and scientific background blended in perfectly.”

O’Brien also emphasized the strength of the team’s dynamics, saying, “We had Rick Smalley, who was a pretty tough guy; Bob Curl, who was one of the nicest and smartest people I’ve ever met; Harry Kroto, who was almost addicted to thinking; and the grad students and postdocs who ran the machines.”

At Rice, collaboration across departments was encouraged, creating an environment conducive to groundbreaking innovation. Neal Lane, Rice’s provost and a professor of physics at the time of the research, emphasized this. “Rice was small when I got here back in ’66. It was a collegial environment in which people shared their ideas and were anxious to get together and talk,” he noted.

Lane highlighted the importance of the discovery of C60 in opening up new possibilities in nanotechnology, including the exploration of new carbon nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes and graphene. “In my view, this was a singular event in the history of nanotechnology,” he said. “It not only created a whole new field of fullerene chemistry, it made feasible the notion of making things from the bottom up, just as physicist Richard Feynman had predicted almost 26 years earlier.”

In 2000, the United States launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a major commitment to supporting nanoscience and nanoengineering research. At the time of NNI’s creation, Lane served as President Clinton’s science advisor and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lane said that Smalley played a crucial role in getting the initiative approved by President Clinton and funded by Congress.

It changed science nationally, and ... the impact fed back to the department and the Wiess school.

—Neal Lane

The discovery of the buckyball at Rice was more than just a scientific breakthrough within the field of nanotechnology: It ignited a legacy of groundbreaking research within the Wiess School of Natural Sciences that continues to this day. As the school celebrates its 50th anniversary, the legacy of the discovery serves as a reminder of what can be achieved when creative, interdisciplinary minds come together.

Lane perhaps summed it up best: “It changed science nationally, and, through the NNI, the impact fed back to the department and the Wiess school.” As Rice continues to push the boundaries in nanoscience and nanotechnology research, the story of the buckyball remains an inspiring milestone in the history of science and the university.

-Ishani Kaul ’25

This work was made possible with support from the Fondren Fellows program.