Robert Floyd Curl Jr.

On 21 December 1955, Robert F. Curl married Jonel Whipple. The couple has two sons, Michael and David Curl.

Robert Floyd Curl was born on August 23, 1933, in Alice, Texas. His father, also Robert Floyd Curls, was a Methodist Minister while his mother, Lessie Waldene Merritt Floyd, was a homemaker. He has an elder sister, Mary Gessner Curl Kurio.

Initially, the family moved a lot and Robert spent the first nine years of his life in various small towns in south Texas. Wherever he went, he was singled out as the ‘preacher’s kid’, a status he did not at all enjoy.

When Robert turned nine, senior Curl became the Supervisor of church activities within the district. The family now settled down in San Antonio and Robert was relieved because he was no longer the ‘preacher’s kid’. Another significant event of this year was that he received a chemistry set as a gift from his parent.

Although the elementary school curricula did not contain chemistry, he began experimenting with it on his own and within a week made up his mind to become a chemist. Since then he did not falter from his aim. Contrarily, with each passing day, he became more interested in the subject.

By Robert’s own admission, he was not particularly brilliant at school. That he always received good grades was because he consistently worked hard. In time, he enrolled at Thomas Jefferson High School. Here they taught chemistry for one year. However, his chemistry teacher made it up by giving him extra project.

In 1957, Robert Curl joined Harvard University for his postdoctoral work. Working under Edgar Bright Wilson, he used microwave spectroscopy to study the bond rotation barriers of molecules.

Sometime now, he received an invitation from Rice University to join its faculty. Therefore, on completion of the postdoctoral period in 1958, he went back to Houston to join Rice University as an Assistant Professor and remained there all through his working life.

Here he took over the laboratory as well as graduate students of George Bird, who had left Rice University for a job in the Polaroid. Inheriting such ready-made set up Curl began working on various topics.

His first student was Jim Kinsey and with him he worked on the microwave spectrum of ClO2 and the treatment of fine and hyperfine structure. Later he began studying the spectra of stable free radicals in collaboration with other scientists.

Subsequently in 1963, he was made an Associate Professor and in 1967, a full professor. In 1976, he was joined by Richard E. Smalley, who had been doing postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago.

Curl is best known for his 1985 discovery of Buckminsterfullerene, a work he undertook with Richard Smalley and Harold Kroto. While looking for long carbon chains, the three scientists exposed graphite surface to laser pulses. As expected, it resulted in formation of carbon gas. When the gas was condensed, they discovered an unknown substance with 60 or 70 carbon atoms.

Presently they found that the carbon molecule with 60 atoms were more common and began to study its composition. They found that it to be a hollow cage-like structure, arranged in a sphere with five and six edges. They called it Buckminsterfullerene in honor of architect Buckminster Fuller, who worked with this geometric shape