Sir Harold (Harry) Walter Kroto, KCB, FRS (born 7 October 1939) is an English chemist and one of the three recipients to share the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He is currently on faculty at Florida State University, which he joined in 2004; prior to that he spent a large part of his working career at the University of Sussex, where he holds an emeritus professorship.
He was born Harold Krotoschiner in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England with his u...
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Sir Harold (Harry) Walter Kroto, KCB, FRS (born 7 October 1939) is an English chemist and one of the three recipients to share the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
He is currently on faculty at Florida State University, which he joined in 2004; prior to that he spent a large part of his working career at the University of Sussex, where he holds an emeritus professorship.
He was born Harold Krotoschiner in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England with his unusual name being of Silesian origin. His father's family came from Bojanowo, Poland, and his mother's from Berlin, Germany. Both his parents were born in Berlin but came to Great Britain in the 1930s as refugees from the Nazis because his father was Jewish.
He was raised in Bolton, Lancashire, England, and attended Bolton School, where he was a contemporary of the highly acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen. In 1955, the family name was shortened to Kroto.
As a child, he became fascinated by a Meccano set. Kroto credits Meccano — amongst other...
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