"Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Robert Curl Signed 3.75X5.25 Photo Todd Mueller COA

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Up for auction "Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Robert Curl Signed 3.75X5.25 Photo.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-6938
Robert Floyd Curl Jr.
(born August 23, 1933) is a University
Professor Emeritus
, Pitzer–Schlumberger Professor of Natural Sciences Emeritus, and Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at
Rice University
. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
in 1996 for the discovery of the
nanomaterial
buckminsterfullerene
, along with
Richard Smalley
(also of Rice University) and
Harold Kroto
of the
University of Sussex
. Born in
Alice, Texas
, United States, Curl was the son of a
Methodist
minister
. Due to his father's missionary work, his family moved several times within southern and southwestern Texas, and the elder Curl was involved in starting the San Antonio Medical Center's Methodist Hospital. Curl attributes his interest in chemistry to a
chemistry set
he received as a nine-year-old, recalling that he ruined the finish on his mother's porcelain stove when
nitric acid
boiled over onto it. He is a graduate of
Thomas Jefferson High School
in
San Antonio, Texas
. His high school offered only one year of chemistry instruction, but in his senior year his chemistry teacher gave him special projects to work on. Curl received a
bachelor of science
from
Rice Institute
(now Rice University) in 1954. He was attracted to the reputation of both the school's academics and football team, and the fact that at the time it charged no tuition. He earned his
doctorate
in chemistry from the
University of California, Berkeley
, in 1957. At Berkeley, he worked in the laboratory of
Kenneth Pitzer
, then dean of the College of Chemistry, with whom he would become a lifelong collaborator. Curl's graduate research involved performing
infrared spectroscopy
to determine the
bond angle
of
disiloxane
. Curl was a postdoctoral fellow at
Harvard University
with
E. B. Wilson
, where he used
microwave spectroscopy
to study the
bond rotation barriers
of molecules. After that, he joined the faculty of Rice University in 1958. He inherited the equipment and graduate students of
George Bird
, a professor who was leaving for a job at
Polaroid
. Curl's early research involved the microwave spectroscopy of
chlorine dioxide
. His research program included both experiment and theory, mainly focused on detection and analysis of
free radicals
using microwave spectroscopy and tunable lasers. He used these observations to develop the theory of their
fine structure
and
hyperfine structure
, as well as information about their structure and the kinetics of their reactions.
Curl's research at Rice involved the fields of infrared and microwave spectroscopy. Curl's research inspired Richard Smalley to come to Rice in 1976 with the intention of collaborating with Curl. In 1985, Curl was contacted by Harold Kroto, who wanted to use a laser beam apparatus built by Smalley to simulate and study the formation of
carbon chains
in
red giant
stars. Smalley and Curl had previously used this apparatus to study
semiconductors
such as
silicon
and
germanium
. They were initially reluctant to interrupt their experiments on these semiconductor materials to use their apparatus for Kroto's experiments on carbon, but eventually gave in.
They indeed found the long carbon chains they were looking for, but also found an unexpected product that had 60 carbon atoms. Over the course of 11 days, the team studied and determined its structure and named it
buckminsterfullerene
after noting its similarity to the
geodesic domes
for which the architect
Buckminster Fuller
was known. This discovery was based solely on the single prominent peak on the
mass spectrograph
, implying a chemically inert substance that was geometrically closed with no
dangling bonds
. Curl was responsible for determining the optimal conditions of the carbon vapor in the apparatus, and examining the spectrograph. Curl noted that
James R. Heath
and
Sean C. O'Brien
deserve equal recognition in the work to Smalley and Kroto. The existence of this type of molecule had earlier been theorized by others, but Curl and his colleagues were at the time unaware of this. Later experiments confirmed their proposed structure, and the team moved on to synthesize
endohedral fullerenes
that had a metal atom inside the hollow carbon shell. The
fullerenes
, a class of molecules of which buckminsterfullerene was the first member discovered, are now considered to have potential applications in
nanomaterials
and
molecular scale electronics
. Robert Curl's 1985 paper entitled "C60: Buckminsterfullerine", published with colleagues H. Kroto, J. R. Heath, S. C. O’Brien, and R. E. Smalley, was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to Rice University in 2015. The discovery of fullerenes was recognized in 2010 by the designation of a
National Historic Chemical Landmark
by the
American Chemical Society
at the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
After winning the Nobel Prize in 1996, Curl took a quieter path than Smalley, who became an outspoken advocate of nanotechnology, and Kroto, who used his fame to further his interest in science education, saying, "After winning a Nobel, you can either become a scientific pontificator, or you can have some idea for a new science project and you can use your newfound notoriety to get the resources to do it. Or you can say, 'Well, I enjoy what I was doing, and I want to keep doing that.'"