Fulleren kristall

In molecular beam experiments, molecules were observed with the exact mass of sixty or seventy or more carbon atoms. In 1985, Harold Kroto, James R. Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, from Rice University, discovered C60, and shortly after came to discover the fullerenes. Kroto, Curl, and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of this class of compounds. C60 and other fullerenes were later noticed occurring outside of a laboratory environment (e.g. in normal candle soot). Fullerene purification remains a challenge to chemists and determines fullerene prices to a large extent. So-called endohedral fullerenes have ions or small molecules incorporated inside the cage atoms.
The existence of the C60 was predicted in 1970 by Eiji Osawa of Toyohashi University of Technology. His idea made it to Japanese magazines but did not reach Europe nor America because of the language gap.