Why did Harold Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl receive the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

Harold Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their joint discovery of fullerenes, a new class of carbon compounds.123

In 1985, while conducting experiments at Rice University, the researchers used a laser-supersonic cluster beam apparatus to vaporize graphite in a helium atmosphere. This process revealed the spontaneous formation of a highly stable, hollow molecule consisting of 60 carbon atoms (C60).132

The team identified that these atoms were arranged in a symmetrical, cage-like structure featuring 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces, mirroring the geometry of a soccer ball. They named this molecule buckminsterfullerene (or "buckyball") after the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome designs shared a similar structural principle. This discovery established fullerenes as the third known allotrope of carbon—alongside diamond and graphite—and opened an entirely new branch of nanotechnology and materials science.123