ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100085
SECTION: NATL/INTL NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
Six scientists - five of them Americans - won Nobel Prizes on Wednesday for discovering soccer ball-shaped molecules dubbed ``buckyballs'' and a strange form of helium that could shed light on the universe's first few moments.
Two Texans and a Briton won the chemistry prize for discovering a family of carbon molecules that spawned a new field of study. Formally known as fullerenes and informally called buckyballs, the odd-shaped molecules were named for architect R. Buckminster Fuller because of their resemblance to his geodesic domes.
The physics prize went to three U.S. scientists for discovering that at extremely low temperatures a form of helium can flow without losing energy to friction. That finding has had unexpected applications to theories about the universe's earliest moments, and opened a window into a weird subatomic realm.
``It's fundamental knowledge about how matter works,'' said Russell Donnelly, a physicist at the University of Oregon who taught one of the physics laureates decades ago. ``I think it's long, long overdue.''
The chemistry prize was shared by Harold W. Kroto, 57, who teaches at Sussex University in England, and Robert F. Curl, Jr., 63, and Richard E. Smalley, 53, of Rice University in Houston. They discovered buckyballs at Rice in 1985.
``It's what every kid who had a chemistry set dreams of. There's no doubt about it, it's marvelous,'' Curl said in Houston.
Buckyballs haven't become a critical part of daily life, but chemists predict that fullerene technology is on the horizon. Labs around the world are working on ways to apply them.
Among other things, they are working on using buckyballs to conduct electricity without resistance or to deliver medicine into the body. Scientists might even be able to turn buckyballs into diamonds or string together a tubular type of fullerene to create super-strong fibers.
``What it does is it gives you a building block that can be employed for a number of possibilities,'' said Stuart Staley, a chemist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ``There's certainly a lot of excitement.''
Fullerenes were thought at first to be an exclusively man-made invention, but after the chemists created them in the laboratory, the molecules were found in natural settings on Earth and in space.
David M. Lee, 65, Robert C. Richardson, 59, and Douglas C. Osheroff, 51, were honored with a Nobel in physics for finding that at temperatures within two thousandths of a degree of absolute zero, the isotope helium-3 can be made to flow, essentially without slowing down. The phenomenon is known as superfluidity.
Lee and Richardson teach at Cornell University in New York. Osheroff is a professor at Stanford University in California. Their research was done at Cornell in the 1970s.
The research has recently shed light on the first moments of the universe. The physical transitions that occur as helium becomes frictionless are similar to processes believed to have taken place a fraction of a second after the big bang, according to the Nobel citation.
One of the three Nobel Prize winners in physics announced Wednesday has ties to Blacksburg. Robert Richardson earned his bachelor's degree in physics in 1958 and his master's in 1960 from Virginia Tech, according to a university spokesman.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. Robert Curl holds plastic molecule modelsby CNBWednesday as he discusses the discovery of a soccer-ball shaped
molecule that won him and two others the Nobel Prize for chemistry.
(headshots) 2. Richardson. 3. Krotor.