Harold Kroto was born on October 7, 1939, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England. Raised in Bolton, Lancashire, England, he graduated with a degree in chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 1961 and received his Ph.D. there in 1964. His Ph.D. work involved high-resolution electronic spectra of free radicals produced by flash photolysis--chemical decomposition by the action of radiant energy. His postdoctoral work was conducted at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. After completing this work he spent a year at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where he also studied quantum chemistry. He began teaching and researching at the University of Sussex in 1967. He was appointed full professor in 1985 and a Royal Research Professor in 1991.

In the 1970s Kroto launched a research program at the University of Sussex to look for chains of carbon in interstellar space. Kroto worked with scientists at the National Research Council, where he did his...