Richard Smalley papers

Richard E. Smalley was affiliated with Rice University from 1976 until his death in 2005, serving as the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry at Rice beginning in 1982 and Professor of Physics at Rice beginning in 1990. A co-founder of the Rice Quantum Institute in 1979, he served as its chairman beginning in 1986, and was the director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1990), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1991), and was the recipient of the 1991 Irving Langmuir Prize in chemical physics, the 1992 International Prize for New Materials (shared with R.F. Curl and H.W. Kroto), the 1992 E.O. Lawrence Award of the U.S. Department of Energy, the 1992 Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry, the 1993 William H. Nichols Medal, and the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (shared with R.F. Curl and H.W. Kroto).

Smalley pioneered advances in the development of supersonic beam laser spectroscopy, super-cold pulsed beams, and laser-driven sources of free radicals, triplets, and metal and semiconductor cluster beams. He discovered and characterized fullerenes, the third elemental form of carbon after graphite and diamond, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Born June 6, 1943, in Akron, Ohio, Smalley received his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1965 from the University of Michigan, and master's and doctorate degrees from Princeton University in 1971 and 1973.