... new molecule buckminsterfullerene after the architect. However the scientists still were not sure whether C60 shared the same structure as Fuller's architectural vision. Then in 1988 American physicist Donald Huffman and German co-worker Wolfgang Kratschmer looked back on some data they had collected some 6 years previously on carbon soot forms in interstellar space (e.g. in helium or argon; not air), by electrically heating graphite rods. They noticed some odd bumps in the ultra-violet absorption spectrum, at the time they thought it was simply contamination of the soot, but when they looked back they thought could these bumps be a characteristic of buckminsterfullerene? Just two years later the Huffman and Kratschmer proclaimed they had found a way to make buckminsterfullerene. Whenever someone heats graphite electrically, they would make buckminsterfullerene, but not realise it! By refining their method Huffman and Kratschmer found they could make soot containing 10% C60, contaminated with a ...

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