A new form, or allotrope, of the element carbon was discovered in the 1980s, and we hear of the story, centering on three chemistry professors: Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl. But they couldn't definitively show the molecular structure of their discovery, though they believed strongly, with circumstantial evidence, that it was soccerball-shaped. A few years later, Wolfgang Krätschmer and American Donald Huffman learned how to make significant quantities of this molecule, and showed that the trio were right.
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