Sussex chemist features in Royal Institution Christmas Lecture
A University of Sussex scientist lent his Nobel Prize gold medal for an experiment on national television last week.
Professor Sir Harry Kroto, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, was awarded a share in the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research at Sussex in the mid 1980s on a new form of carbon.
And Dr Peter Wothers, who was giving the 2012 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, used Professor Kroto’s prize medal - made of solid 18-carat green gold and plated with 24-carat gold - to find out whether a member of the audience was really worth her weight in gold.
Professor Kroto, who was a full-time member of the Chemistry faculty at Sussex for 37 years until 2004, then described what he won his Nobel Prize for.
In 1985 he and two US colleagues discovered a new form of carbon - the C60 molecule - created from 60 carbon atoms in the structure of a football and known as the buckminsterfullerene’ or ‘buckyball’. “It was such a fantastic surprise when we discovered it,” recalled Professor Kroto.
During the Royal Institution lecture, Dr Wothers and Professor Kroto also investigated – “in the name of science” - what happens when you set fire to a diamond.
The annual lecture series, filmed in front of a live audience of schoolchildren, is designed to present scientific subjects to a general audience in an informative and entertaining manner.
This year’s subject was the chemistry of the world around us: air, water and earth.
Sir Harry took part in the final of the three hour-long programmes, which was broadcast on BBC Four on 28 December and is available online until 8.59pm today (Friday 4 January). Sussex staff and students can also watch it via the Box of Broadcasts service: just log in with your ITS username and password.