Most students of chemistry are familiar with the common allotropic forms of carbon: diamond and graphite. The 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Robert F. Curl and Richard E. Smalley of Rice University and Sir Harold W. Kroto of the University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K., for their discovery of a new allotropic form of carbon, C₆₀, subsequently termed buckminsterfullerene (see 1, 2 and 3).

Buckminsterfullerene is a spherical molecule in which benzene rings are fused to each other with bonds that form the same pattern as the lines on a modern soccerball; the name of the molecule was coined from its relationship to the geodesic dome of Buckminster Fuller. The theory of aromaticity requires that a benzene ring must be flat to possess aromatic character, but the existence of buckminsterfullerene raises the question, “How flat is flat enough?” The rings must be deformed somewhat from planarity in order to accomodate the spherical shape.

The initial discovery of buckminsterfullerene spawned the subsequent discovery and preparation of other spherical carbon forms as well as tubes of carbon atoms (”nanotubes”). Organic chemists have also begun meeting the challenge of synthesizing “partial fullerenes,” that is, bowl-shaped molecules (4). Definitive reviews of buckminsterfullerene have been published. (5, 6

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