Scientist and Nanotube

He was weakened by cancer, but Nobel laureate Richard Smalley was still eager to pull on rubber boots, wade into water with a light tube, and pose before a model of a molecule he discovered—all to make his point: Nanotechnology can help us. In 1985 Smalley and his team discovered a remarkably strong molecule made of 60 carbon atoms and resembling a geodesic dome; they dubbed it a buckyball (after Buckminster Fuller, who invented the dome).