Harold W. Kroto

From Philosopedia

Kroto, Harold W. [Sir] (7 October 1939– )

Kroto is a chemist, one of the three recipients who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Harold (Harry) Walter Krotoschiner was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England. His father's family was from Bojanowo, Poland, his mother's from Berlin, Germany. The family went to Great Britain in the 1930s as refugees, for the father was Jewish.

Kroto attended Bolton School in Lancashire.

In his Nobel autobiography, he observed.

• I am a devout atheist - nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator.

He received his B. Sc. with honours at the University of Sheffield in 1961 and his Ph. D. there in 1964. He taught at the University of Sussex (1967 to 1985) and was a chemistry professor there starting in 1985.

In 1996 he won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry (with Robert F. Curl, Jr. and Richard E. Smalley). In the same year he was knighted.

Kroto signed Humanist Manifesto 2000 and is a member of the International Academy of Humanism.

He currently teaches chemistry and biochemistry at Florida State University.