Nobel Laureate to lecture in York
Posted on 21 October 2010
Professor Sir Harold Kroto was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley) in 1996 for the discovery of a new form of carbon, the C60, Buckminsterfullerene.His lecture at the University of York on 26 October is called ‘Architecture in nanospace’ and will focus on the ‘bottom up’ self-assembly of atomic and molecular structures from the nanoscale.
Professor Kroto will explore how these new approaches are leading to novel advanced materials and the development of nanoscale devices, which parallel their standard macroscopic engineered counterparts. He will suggest that future possible applications may range from civil engineering to advanced molecular electronics, from tiny supercomputers to buildings which can withstand powerful hurricanes and earthquakes.
But he says such advances will require a paradigm shift in synthetic chemical techniques and to achieve them we need to learn how to create really large molecules with very precisely defined structures at the atomic level.
Now Francis Eppes Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Florida State University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex, Professor Kroto was knighted in 1996 for his contributions to chemistry. He served as president of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 2002 to 2004, and was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society (1990) and to the National Academy of Sciences (2007).
The York JEOL Nanocentre Directors, Professor Pratibha Gai and Professor Edward Boyes, are organising an interdisciplinary students’ and researchers’ poster session in honour of Professor Kroto at the Nanocentre, on York Science Park.
The lecture is currently full.
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