Fullerene Quotes (4 quotes)
It [buckyballs, C60 by Richard Smalley] was an absolutely electrifying discovery. Within a year or two, you couldn’t pick up a chemistry journal without one-third of the articles being about fullerenes.
As quoted in Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle (28 Oct 2005).
It was a stroke of luck. The only credit you can claim is not ignoring your stroke of luck.
Reply to reporters asking “Tell us how you made this great discovery” of fullerene molecules, quoted in Eric Berger, 'Legendary Rice Professor Robert Curl Retiring', Houston Chronicle (29 Jun 2008).
The discovery that these soccer-ball-like molecules can be made in large quantities will have an effect on chemistry like the sowing of a bucket of flower seeds—the results will spring up everywhere from now on. I’d be surprised if we don’t see thousands of new fullerene compounds in the next few years, some of which are almost certain to have important uses.
As quoted in Malcolm W. Browne, 'Bizarre New Class of Molecules Spawns Its Own Branch of Chemistry', New York Times (25 Dec 1990), Late Edition (East Coast), L37.
This discovery [of fullerenes] is principally about the way that carbon condenses, it’s genius for forming clusters.
From Nobel Lecture (7 Dec 1996), 'Discovering the Fullerenes', collected in Ingmar Grenthe (ed.), Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1996-2000 (2003).