CHEMISTRY
Skeptical eyebrows were raised in 1985 when three chemists reported that they had stumbled onto a new form of molecular carbon that they believed, but could not prove, had the shape of a soccer ball. Nobody is skeptical anymore. Not only has their theory been confirmed, but it has blossomed into a thriving branch of research. And last week that trio of chemists--Harold Kroto from Britain's University of Sussex, and Robert Curl and Richard Smalley from Rice University in Houston--were rewarded for their work with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
They made their serendipitous discovery by zapping graphite with a...
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