Originally published December 5, 2014
By Nadia M. Whitehead
UTEP News Service
Students, faculty and staff packed the Undergraduate Learning Center’s largest auditorium on Tuesday, Nov. 25.
The crowd gathered for the appearance of a world-renowned scientist: Sir Harry Kroto, the 1996 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry. Kroto’s visit was part of The University of Texas at El Paso’s Centennial Lecture Series, a program that brings noteworthy speakers to campus to share their perspectives on a broad range of issues.
“For academicians, an individual of this stature – a Noble Prize winner – is fantastic; it’s like meeting a movie star,” said Luis Echegoyen, Ph.D., the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry who is responsible for inviting the Nobel Laureate to UTEP. “I think talks like these can lead to a lot of inspiration.”
Eager to catch a glimpse of and to hear the speaker, guests arrived up to an hour before the lecture; they weren’t disappointed.
The chemist managed to keep the hundreds of listeners on the edge of their seats throughout his hour-long talk. Kroto’s light-hearted lecture went from teasing UTEP President Diana Natalicio about her lengthy introduction – reminding the 75-year-old of accomplishments he had long since forgotten – to highlighting silly body tattoos of mathematical equations on devoted science geeks.
But the jests weren’t all for naught. With the audience enthralled and grinning, Kroto got to the more important aspects of science, such as the significance of doubt in scientific discovery.
“Don’t accept what authority tells you, question it,” he said, reminding everyone that science is the ability to decide if something is true by conducting experiments. “Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.”
The chemist also discussed his life before the Nobel Prize, revealing he was involved in a number of activities besides chemistry, such as gymnastics, tennis, guitar, photography and graphic design.
Kroto became a research professor at the University of Sussex in England in the 1980s. There, he became fascinated with the idea of simulating the conditions that exist within a star.
The interest led him and two Texas colleagues to accidentally discover the world’s first nanoparticles: buckminsterfullerenes, or “buckyballs.” Made up of 60 carbon atoms fused together in a soccer-ball shape, buckyballs surprised researchers across the globe because they represented a previously unknown form of carbon.
The find didn’t just lead to a Nobel Prize; it led to a revolution in nanotechnology.
Today, buckyballs are being studied around the globe for their potential applications in drug delivery and solar energy, including by scientists at UTEP.
“What they did is credited, to some degree, for kicking off the nanotechnology revolution; it’s what I focus my research on today,” said Echegoyen, whose office is enthusiastically decorated with buckyballs.
Echegoyen is currently working with Kroto to secure a grant from the National Science Foundation. The two hope to build an international research team that includes scientists from Japan, China and Spain.
If the team secures the grant, they plan to study endohedral fullerenes, special buckyballs that have various compounds trapped within their soccer ball frames. The research would lead to fundamental knowledge of the mysterious shapes that are currently understudied.
Kroto finished his lecture by talking about an organization he co-founded called The Vega Science Trust. The educational program uses video to communicate science and help build a fundamental understanding of nature. Created by college-level students around the world, Kroto encouraged UTEP students to get involved so that they could begin to learn how to communicate their research effectively to non-scientists.
At the end of the lecture, Kroto answered a number of questions from curious attendees. The Nobel Laureate even took selfies with students at the reception.
“I’ve been listening to some beautiful research that’s being carried out here, and the students have been very appreciative of what I have to say,” he said. “This is a fantastic campus.”