Discovery of C60: Buckminsterfullerene
Sir Harry Kroto's day by day account of the discovery of C60: Buckminsterfullerene.
Rashomon II reality by Harry Kroto
An account written in homage to Akira Kurosawa.
When a convoluted event occurs, “Rashomon” factors occasionally apply in that some contributions do not appear to fit well together.
The film Rashomon by director Akira Kurosawa, which is based on two short stories, “In the Grove” and “Rashomon” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, deals with this sort of situation.
The fact that in Rashomon all the accounts were fictitious and therefore nothing actually happened always bothered me, until I learned that Kurosawa was not interested in truth. The determination of what actually happened was not Kurosawa’s aim in this film as all the accounts are completely incompatible and embellished by each individual’s personal ego.
Apparently Kurosawa says it is about the “quicksand of ego”! However, in a real situation something definite actually happens. The lesson I personally draw from Rashomon, (as well as egotistical issues), is that in a real case, individuals tend to present their personal “realities” and these can offer deeper and more complete insights into multifaceted events.
Basically Objectivity with a capital O is to be found in the Totality of the Subjectivity with capitals T and S, respectively. An interesting corollary of Kurosawa’s thesis is that individuals, not directly involved who seek to present the definitive story, can also not be relied upon to evince disinterested accounts as they present their own personal “biased” views!
The conclusion is that there is no such thing as a single “objective” story containing no conflicting elements!
Account of events
Sir Harry Kroto's account of events over two weeks in 1985, with extracts from Gary Taubes’ article (PDF, 1.16MB). Taubes’ article also includes comments which conflict with the ones below.
Background
"I was invited by Bob Curl to visit Rice in Easter 1974, after the meeting that Jim Boggs organised in Austin. While we were there, he showed a fascinating paper by Smalley’s group on SiC2 which showed it was triangular and this explained a lot. I was considering how to make molecules with Si=C bonds after being so successful with C=S and C=P programmes.
"I went over to see Rick and while he was jumping around Ap2, the idea formed in my mind that this system might confirm my conjecture that in the lab, we could easily simulate a carbon star atmosphere and create the carbon chains we had detected. Also using R2PI, we could check out Douglas’ suggestion that they were carriers of the DIBs. There was the beautiful work of Hintenberger in the 60s which indicated this must be easily possible with Ap2.
"I did not suggest this to Smalley but decided to discuss the idea with Bob that evening. We put together the ideas and over the next 17 months, Bob and I exchanged letters working things out.
"In around June of 1984, my Sussex colleague Tony Stace handed me a copy of the Exxon paper in which they had actually done the basic experiment."
"I was a bit miffed but as I read the paper, I realised that they had not really done the experiments with hydrogen and nitrogen. The new family could not possibly be the mythical and totally anti-chemical common sense carbynes as they suggested.
"I thought they might be graphene flakes and, must admit, did not notice that C60 was strong. It was no stronger than C11. Also, we wanted to do a second experiment to check out Douglas’s carbon chain DIB conjecture.
"In late August 1985, Bob called me to say Smalley had agreed to the experiments. I hopped on the first plane I could to Houston.
"I arrived on a Thursday at the end of August. The first thing I did was give a presentation to the whole group (Jim, Sean, Bob and Rick). Yuan and Qingling might have been there too. It took at least two or maybe two and a half hours.
"I divulged everything I knew about interstellar chemistry astrophysics carbon stars radioastronomy. The total knowledge acquired from some ten years of study since our 1975 detection of the long carbon chains."
Sunday 1 September
"Work started on the Sunday looking at the whole range of carbon clusters.
"I spent most of my time in the next week with Jim and Sean. Sean had designed a new nozzle which was ideal for graphite vapourisation. Jim and I got on like a house on fire having a mutual passion for books, when taking a break we'd pop into book stores. We also had a mutual interest in playing the guitar, although Jim was infinitely better than I and seemingly could play any musical instrument.
"We worked all hours with the three of us often ending up late at night at the House of Pies. We had of course the Exxon and AT&T papers.
"My initial objective was to look at clusters with n<30 and react them with H and NH3 to make the cyanopolyynes. However because we could also see the higher set, we also optimised the MS settings to inspect the n=30-100 region. AT&T had shown that C60 was the strongest so I am sure that this peak was used to optimise the range.
"In general, I worked mainly with Jim and often with Sean. Bob came over every day “religiously” at around 2pm for an hour or so to discuss the results. I do not remember if Rick ever came to the lab, but at the group meeting every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon he was apprised of the state of progress. I generally produced a few sheets summarising the results.
"There was a bug in the software which meant we could only see the data on the video monitor and not print it out. Yuan was behind the scenes working on it. And I think finally sorted it out by Wednesday 4th, allowing us to really study the data in detail.
"I am sure that all of us, Jim, Sean, Yuan and I, gradually realised the erratic behaviour of the C60 signal, especially after Yuan had enabled us to print out the data and study it carefully. As we varied the conditions, the C60 signal could be varied by an order of magnitude relative to C58 and C62."
"I did not know until many years later that Yuan had written in the Ap2 lab book also on the same day, Sept 4th."
Yuan had written:
'C60 and C70 are very strong!'
"Sean found conditions in which C60 was 30x stronger than adjacent peaks of Friday 6th."
This lab is like being in an army helicopter or something: you have five lasers going over your head; it's noisy; all kinds of pumps are going and data coming on screen. But Harry, whenever he saw anything a little bit unusual, he would really key in on it. Almost all the time it would be nothing — some artefact or something. But this C60 was such a thing, and he really keyed in on it.
Jim Heath
Taubes article excerpt
Friday 6 September
"My memory is that we had a group meeting on Friday 6 September. It was decided to go all out for finding the exact conditions which maximized C60.
"I was going to drive up to Dallas at the weekend and return on Sunday. Jim worked on this over the weekend and may have engineered a lip on the nozzle exit channel to increase the residence time before expansion. I think Rick may have suggested this or Jim thought of it, I cannot remember.
"I got back on Sunday and went to the lab where Jim had increased the intensity ratio finally by 9th to around 40:1 and finally found conditions which resulted in the beautiful data shown in the printout which was used in the paper.
"From then on, the discussions centred on what sort of structure could result in a stable C60 species.
"I have no idea who proposed the possibility that the graphene network might have closed into a ball when it was clear that C60 did not react. The chains did add 2 H atoms and a flat graphene should add many H atoms on the edge. It could have been me or any one of us, Rick, Bob, Jim or Sean."
Neither Smalley nor Kroto lays exclusive claim to the first suggestion of a spherical, caged structure. Smalley credits it to "all the authors", Kroto to "intense discussions in which we all participated".
Gary Taubes
Taubes article excerpt
"I don’t remember anyone else’s specific ideas other than my own. I had three."
A BF geodesic dome
"However, when the cage structure was aired it reminded me of a BF dome image in my copy of Graphis on expo 67 which we had visited. Then I suggested we get a book by BF from the library. I did not have a library card so I could not get it out myself so Rick got it out. I proposed that BF was a clue to a possible structure which should be unreactive as the dangling edge bonds would have been eliminated."
O'Brien, too, says that Kroto emphasised that the "only way possible to make an unreactive piece of carbon with 60 atoms is a closed up ball without any dangling bonds".
Gary Taubes
Taubes article excerpt
The stardome
"I suggested this structure to Bob on Monday lunch time as we walked back to the Curl home. Bob was not convinced. I wondered whether to call home as it was now 12noon and Margaret would just be coming home from work at 6pm UK time.
"Had Bob been a bit more convinced I would have asked if I could make what would have been an expensive call. I was pretty sure it was in a Xerox box in the guest room. This is the most important call I never made!"
A quadruple decker roughly spheroidal sandwich
"6/24/24/6 which had but one merit - it came up with the number 60. I did wonder whether some peculiar overlap involving sp2 and p overlap might explain the un-reactivity, but it seemed to me that one and two were more likely because they readily explained the lack of reactivity."
"We went out for a celebratory dinner on Monday evening to the Goode Company.
"We discussed all the ideas we had. I talked about my three ideas including the fact that the stardome in the UK had pentagons and hexagons.
"I went back to the lab to consult the BF book we had got out of the library but could not find it. That evening Bob had come round to taking my stardome idea seriously, but dissuaded me from calling home in what was now the middle of the night.
"Very early the next morning Bob called me to say come into the lab quickly as Rick had a solution related to the stardome I had discussed with him the night before."
"We were ecstatic when we saw the model…yes it was almost certainly the same structure as the stardome. I felt quite happy that two of my ideas were right as I confirmed when I got home a few days later.
"Rick was at his PC as we were putting the final touches to the paper and I was standing behind him. He asked me about a title and as the BF expo dome was a clue for me, I suggested on the spur of the moment: C60: Buckminsterfullerene
"Rick typed this in and I do not remember any comment at the time but some time later appears to have added a paragraph about other possible names, which I did not notice until after it was published. When I returned on my second visit, Rick indicated in no uncertain terms how much he disliked the name.
Kroto says he proposed the name on the spur of the moment on Tuesday as the group was writing the title of the paper claiming the discovery, and that it took some work to talk Smalley and Curl into accepting it. Curl agrees that Kroto had to convince him. Smalley, whom the popular press has often credited with coining the name, says he can't remember who first suggested Buckminsterfullerene, but he admits that he was less fond of it than Kroto.
Gary Taubes
Taubes article excerpt
Smalley said that he had overcome any initial reservations he might have had to Kroto's proposal to name C60 Buckminsterfullerene.
Ed Applewhite
From 'The Naming of Buckminsterfullerene' by E J Applewhite
Read the article 'The Naming of Buckminsterfullerene' (PDF, 179KB).
"When letters were written criticising my name for C60, I wrote a defence in Nature (PDF, 130KB).