On Nov. 14, 1985, buckyballs were discovered by chemists Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley. While experimenting with vaporizing carbon in a lab, the research team discovered a unique, stable molecule of 60 carbon atoms arranged in a sphere.

They nicknamed their discovery “buckyballs” after architect Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes resembled the molecule’s shape.

The three researchers were awarded jointly the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for their discovery of fullerenes”.  Buckminsterfullerene has absolute symmetry.

Every carbon is bound to three others, at the vertex of one pentagon and two hexagons. A nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum of the molecule reveals a single band. The buckyball is the prototype of a whole class of carbon molecules referred to collectively as fullerenes.

One example is the carbon nanotube, which has gained considerable commercial interest because of its exceptional tensile strength and electrical and heat conductive properties. Nanotubes and cage-like fullerenes also have potential as components in molecular machines the size of proteins.