16 Black Mountain College
2It was the beginning of the June 1948 Black Mountain Summer College. It was humid and hot. You could hear the high-pitched sound of the cicadas in the heat of the day and at night the croaking of the tree frogs. Guests were beginning to arrive. Some needed a ride from the train station, some came by car. Richard and Louise Lippold and their two daughters arrived in an old black hearse.
3My summer job was working in the laundry room checking out sheets and towels and preparing beds and rooms for summer guests like Elaine and Willem de Kooning, R. Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Charles Burchard.
4We were waiting in front of the dining hall for our evening lecturer, Buckminster Fuller. He arrived in a yellow Studebaker pulling a dome-shaped aluminum trailer. He jumped out of his car, introduced himself as Richard Buckminster Fuller, but put us at ease by adding, “Call me Bucky.” We all helped him unload his trailer, which was packed full of materials for the summer project and models of all sizes. He had not yet built a dome, which was going to be his summer project.
5After dinner the lecture began. At midnight Bucky was still talking to students who had signed up for his class. This was his first teaching assignment. My study, which was an army barrack, faced the meadow where the dome would be built.
6I volunteered to be the college barber that summer, although I had never cut anyone’s hair. (As a child I had watched my father cut our hair.) Bucky needed a short %-inch haircut. After the haircut he decided I needed a barber pole. He immediately went to his study and produced a red-and-yellow barber pole out of the Venetian blinds. He then nailed it up on the porch of my study. Before I knew it I was in business.
7At Black Mountain College each of us was given an 8-by-8-foot cubicle called a “study” in the studies building. We could paint it whatever color we chose.
8For an evening’s diversion the students and faculty drove a few miles to Peek’s Tavern for beer and folk dancing. Bucky was fascinated by the folk dancers’ dance patterns. He made diagrams of the dance steps. On the way back from Peek’s in Albert’s Model A, Elaine de Kooning, eating a candy bar, sang out loud, “Oh, I have eaten all the almonds out of my joy! ” The townspeople surely must have thought that we were strange.
9In 1948, as a twenty-two-year-old student, I did not see the significance of that summer. But looking back fifty-one years, it was a magical time: We were there to witness the first Bucky Fuller dome experiment, which didn’t work on the first try. (He returned the following year with several solutions.) Merce Cunningham was thinking about forming his own dance company. John Cage was composing music for the prepared piano. Willem de Kooning and Josef Albers were exhibiting in New York to a cool reception, and Richard Lippold was working on new sculptures in wire rods.
10It was that summer that helped me decide to take charge of my own life. It did not bother Fuller that I could not understand his books—“Darling, never mind.” Just as it did not bother Max Dehn, mathematician and philosopher, that I slept through his first philosophy class. He said, “Let her sleep, she was up all night.” When Albert asked him ič he was disappointed that he had so few serious mathematics students, Dehn replied, “At my age”—seventyseven—“I’m not interested in mathematicians.”
11Since the enrollment at Black Mountain was small, everyone had to do several things. Besides the job to provide fresh laundry every week, I took my weekly turn at dishwashing, setting tables, sweeping the dining-hall floor, picking up trash, and other jobs. We did our chores with some of the faculty, who took community service seriously. The faculty and students ate together. We had lively conversations. They analyzed problems and proposed solutions.
12Bucky thought it was wonderful that Albert Lanier and I were getting married. I asked him to design our wedding ring. Mary Jo Slick, a student at the Institute of Design, made it from a black stone that Bucky had picked up on the beach of Lake Huron. (We married in 1949. In 1999 we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary with our six children and ten grandchildren.) His only advice to us was “The world is your oyster.”
13I have asked Albert to write about the dome project, since he worked with Bucky that summer, and this is how he remembers it:
14“Fuller, the most optimistic, positive-thinking man I ever met, showed us a beautiful model of the frame for a dome. It must have been 3 or 4 feet in diameter. With his directing us we were going to lay out and erect the frame of a big dome maybe 44 feet or more in diameter. Very precise calculations would be made and, with these dimensions, we lay out the actual members, which would be made from the slightly curved aluminum used in the manufacture of Venetian blinds. The measuring, color coding, punching of holes was very tedious and endless. Mr. Fuller did warn us that it might not work. (We did not believe him for a minute.) His definition of success was the point at which failure no longer occurred. We punched, coded, coiled the strips, and prepared for the most important performance of that performance-rich summer, the erection of the first geodesic dome. The day finally came—overcast, maybe a slight drizzle. We went to the field selected for the raising of the dome with all the parts and the few simple tools we would need for assembly. Every man, woman, and child at the college that summer gathered on a slight bluff to watch this miracle. We uncoiled the members, we bolted them together, we kept expecting the thing to rise. It didn’t. It lay there in the field supine like a giant’s plate of spaghetti. We students were devastated. But not Bucky. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘we must use stronger material or reduce the size.’ And Elaine de Kooning affectionately named it the Supine Dome.”
15M. C. Richards translated the Erik Satie play The Ruse of Medusa from French. Bucky resisted playing the role of Baron of Medusa in the play. He had never acted before and was quite unhappy with the way it was going. Arthur Penn, then a student, stepped in to direct the play. He had Bucky jumping around the dining hall to loosen him up. They finally did two versions of the play. Bucky ad-libbed the ending of the second version. Elaine de Kooning played his daughter and Merce Cunningham played the mechanical monkey. Students Mary Phelan, Albert Lanier, Ray Johnson, Forrest Wright, and I made costumes for the performance; Willem de Kooning made the main set.
16That summer I took Albers’s “Color and Design” classes and Merce Cunningham’s dance class, worked on props for the Erik Satie play, volunteered to be the college barber, watched the students working with Bucky’s domeproject, and watched Bucky practicing his part as the Baron with student director Arthur Penn in the dining room.
17We also tried Bucky’s experiment about new sleeping patterns. He finally divided the day into four parts, six hours of work followed by thirty minutes of cat-napping, which added up to two hours of sleep per day.
18After Albert and I were married in San Francisco in 1949, we saw Anne and Bucky nearly every time they came to the Bay Area or when Bucky was on his way to India to discuss India’s transportation plan with President Indira Gandhi. While in San Francisco he would make time to visit a high school, a middle school, or an elementary school to teach the children how to make a great circle with twelve bobby pins and four paper plates and the DNA pattern by folding a piece of typing paper. He also gave advice on a student-built dome of wood and plastic.
19When I asked him about youth boredom, he told me a story about a young Japanese protester who came to one of his lectures, Bucky told him, “Don’t waste your time in the streets protesting. Learn as much as you can and become a useful citizen.” This young man went on to develop many new ideas.
20When I asked him about education, he said, “Create an environment so learning can take place.” In 1968, a group of parents started a program in San Francisco’s public schools to bring artists and children together and empower parents.
21Josef Albers was a genius at bringing unlike minds together to work. Neither Albers nor Bucky was trying to produce artists. They were not interested in trends, movements, or what was popular. Their advice to us was simple: be truthful, be honest to yourself, don’t be afraid of failure, study nature’s way, and learn its principles. Perhaps that is a lesson from Bucky Fuller that I impart to students for the millennium.
22It was the experience of that unique summer that set the course of my life as an artist, as a parent, and as an active member in our community.
24from And It Came to Pass—Not to Stay
2526Always excitedly acknowledging The a priori infinite mystery
31Undiscovered and unexplained
32And is popularly overlooked altogether
3334In the momentary excitement of preoccupation Only with that which is discovered
35And especially with realizations
36Of the new human advantaging significance
37Of each great scientific discovery
4041The rational geometrical rate of change Characterizing the Interattractiveness
43While their relative distances apart Vary only at an arithmetical rate Which interattractiveness itself Let alone its inversely varying
45Is neither manifest nor implied
4647. By any of the constant physical characteristics Of either of the interattracted celestial bodies When either is considered only separately And only in the unique terms Of one or the other’s
48Integral dimensions/mass/chemistry
49And independent electromagnetic properties
50And though Newton’s mathematically stated law
51Of exponentially differing rates
53Mass-distance interattractiveness
54Of independent celestial bodies
55Was thereafter found by science
56To be always unfailingly operative
57In all macro or micro cosmic
60The dynamic interpositioning
61Of all individually remote bodies
67Of the remote-from-one-another bodies
71The invisible interattractiveness
74Is so comprehensively embracing in importance
79Intertransforming Scenario Universe
80And even though we give that unexplained behavior
82The name does not explain the mystery
84Like all scientifically generalized principles
86And synergy means the unique behaviors manifest
89Of two independent variables
9091Whose unique system behaviors Are entirely unpredicted
92By any behaviors or characteristics Of any of the system’s components When each is considered only separately Wherefor it is ever experimentally demonstrable That the unpredicted synergetic behaviors
93Of stricdy assessed system components Constitute scientific manifest
9697Within which major scientific discoveries occur Which context itself always remains unexplained By such discoveries as Newton’s
98Of the first power arithmetical Vs. the second-power geometrical
100Gravitational interattractiveness
101Of separate bodies in Universe
103104Of our experientially derived knowledge Only humans’ minds can discover
105These nonsubstantial interrelationships
108109Any of the synergetically behaving system’s Plurality of independently orbiting components
110For it is also experientially demonstrable That in contradistinction to humans’ minds
111Humans’ brains always and only
115Special case inputs and recalls
116Characterizing each and every
117Separate and terminalled experience Whose separate special case data Never contain integral physical clues Explanatory of the synergetic behaviors
118Of the omni-interaccommodative
119Mathematically generalized principles
120Always demonstrably governing
121The complexedly overlapping episodes
124Multifrequenced and magnituded
127Aberrationally limited complementations
129And being also acutely aware
130Of our own corporeal limitations
131Yet ever renewably inspired
134Which only intuitively suggests
135Imminent discovery of further synergetic potentials
136Innate and gestating in Scenario Universe
138Are realistically noted and sorted
139Only within our subconsciously operative faculties
140Which subconscious sortings it seems
141Once in a while inadvertently produce
142Synergetic relationship insights
143News of the arrival of which
144Are teleo-intuitively communicated
147To look again in certain directions
150And aware that those subconscious faculties
151May be intuitively programmed
153For a reliable and orderly means
154Of inducing systematic conceptualizing
155Of the significant import to humanity
159By truth-coupled human minds
160And also assuming that such conceptualizing
161Can be directionally oriented
162In respect to the environmental geometry
163Of self’s momentary circumstances
164As the conceptualizing relates angularly
165To self’s head-to-toe observer’s axis
166And realizing that the dawning sense
168Gestating in the subconscious
170As a discernible generalized principle
171Together with spontaneous recall
172Of other already proven principles
173All of which may be frequency tuned
175Into special case realizations of now
176Thus to serve as a communicable means of entry
177Into constructively competent participation by humans
178In the strategic decision making
179Concerning the special case
181To be selectively and successfully realized
186Own evolutionary trending options
187While also thereafter permitting humanity’s
188Responsibly followed-through
189Anticipatory design science accomplishments
190Of ever more effective and satisfying
191Human life support artifacts
192Ever increasing those artifacts’ functional performances
193Per each unit of resource reinvestments
194As stated in physical measures
195Of work or structure produced
198And each erg of energy therein invested
199201The unique and limited advantages Inhering exclusively in those individuals Who all by themselves
202Take and maintain the economic initiative
204Developing their production prototypes And proving the latters’ capabilities And safety of use
208Of the integrity of Universal regeneration itself The individual initiatives being always undertaken In the face of the formidable
209Physical capital and credit advantages
210Of the massive corporations, foundations Trade and other special interest unions And political states
211All of whom seek entropically to turn All such syntropically potential gains Of Advantage for all
212To their own exclusively special advantage
215As well as all negative activities Social movements and reforms
216While also concurrently endeavouring
217By experiment, exploration and published data To inductively excite
219Awareness of all humanity’s
220Syntropically multiplicative potentials And techno-economically feasible options As well as humanity’s awareness That only by use of such options Can humanity effectively cope with And divest itself
223Through comprehensively anticipatory
227In the form of inanimate artifacts and services
228To participate in nature’s multi-optioned
230Reforming of both the physical and metaphysical
231Environmental events and circumstances
232Instead of trying to reform
233Human behaviors and opinions
235That history’s political powers
238Exclusively through artifact inventions
239To accomplish prototyped capabilities
240Of providing ever more performance
243The wealth augmenting prospects for all humanity
244Of such design regenerations
245Will induce their spontaneous
246And economically successful
249Exclusively service-oriented industries
250As the regeneratively escalating effectiveness
251Of the latters’ responsible resource reinvestments
252Per each unit of resources reinvested
253Render comprehensively obsolete
254Any and all economic necessity
255To sell buy or own anything
256While coincidently obsoleting as well
257The economically degenerative practices
258Of irresponsible one-way selling-off
260261All of which chain reactions will trend
262To ever higher performance attainments
263Of the ever improving artifact instrumented services
268Economic and physical success
269Plus enjoyment of all Earth
270Without one individual interfering with
272At the expense of any other humans
273Now alive or henceforth to be born
275Through such responsibly evolving
277Of exclusively service oriented
278Artifact instrumented industries
279To accomplish universal economic success
280Well being and freedom of humans
281Together with a sustained abundance
282For all foreseeable generations of humans to come
283Of all the human life-support essentials
284Thereby to eliminate all reason
286Of any and all varieties of politics
287Each of whose ideologies mistakenly say
288“We have the best and fairest way
289Of dealing with the fundamental inadequacy
292And lethally over-populated
294And with such design-science-attained
295Sustainable abundance for all
297And attainable for all humanity by 1985
298Will also come obsolescence
303And cold guerrilla warfaring
306Of whole generations of youth
307Upon the fallacious assumption
315As we have been taught by history
317And with such design science attainable
318Elimination by obsolescence
320Has learned by experience to be undesirable
323There will also come cessation
324Of the history-long misassumed
327That is to prove themselves to be
328Extraordinarily valuable exceptions to the dictum
329That humanity is meant to be a failure
330And all the sovereign political states
332As will also all economic competition
334For any state, corporation or individual
335And the world will become preoccupied
336With recirculating all its chemical elements
337Which as they are totally recycled
338At an average rate of every twenty-two years
339Will be progressively reinvested
340With the ever more effective
342345And scrap monger withholdings
346To escalate price structures
347And the most important obsolescence making
349Of humanity’s most self-destructive weapon
351For Universe operates only on truth
352And it is the most outstanding truth
354That we have arrived at the threshold
355Of new human functioning in Universe
356Which functioning can only be effectively performed
357With the prime struggle just to survive
358Being completely disposed of
359And with it all the debilitative fears
360Attendant upon that long struggle
361But midway of the threshold crossing
363That the only alternative to that success
364Is the self-destruction of humanity
366A complete success or utter failure
367Is in such critical balance
370Every smallest moment-to-moment decision
371Tips the scales affirmatively or negatively
373It is both fear and ignorance
374That delays popular comprehension
375Of its historically unprecedented option
377For fear secretly grips all wage and salary earners As well as all political and private bureaucracies Wherefor I realize that all humanity
378Is plunging into an unprecedented state of revolution Which if proving to be predominantly bloody and physical Will probably terminate human occupancy of EARTH
379Or if, predominantly, metaphysically coped with As a comprehensive design revolution
380Will probably insure the presence of Earthians For millenniums to come
381For the design revolution To which I am committed
382Is the metaphysical and positively objective counterpart Of Mahatma Gandhi’s
383Subjectively passive resistance And if design science wins Each human henceforth will function In predominandy metaphysical ways In our cosmically designed role As the most effective
384Local Universe problem detector and solver In the spontaneous support
385Of the vast complex reciprocal scheme Of celestial energy’s
386Increasingly disorderly and expanding Local entropic stellar exportings And their elsewhere concomitant
387Increasingly orderly and contracting Syntropic planetary importings
388(As for instance here upon planet Earth) This being the now dawningly realized Cosmic function of Earthian humans
389To solve locally evolving Universe problems Both physical and metaphysical
390Thus locally fortifying the integrity Of eternally regenerative Universe
391Whose cosmic omnicircumferential embracement Integrates as gravity
393Always more vectorally effective
394395Than the sum of all local and nonsimultaneous Radial disintegrations of radiation
396Even as do a few barrel hoops
398The radially outward escape
402Individual staves of the barrel
403As also myopically preoccupied
404Ignorantly disintegrative humans
405Are bound together upon our planet
406By cosmically embracing benign laws
407And necessities of Universe
408Such as those guaranteeing the integrity
409Of eternally regenerative Universe
410Manifest in the invariable relationship
411Of cosmically greater effectiveness of gravity
412Than the disintegrative effectiveness
413Of equally energetically endowed radiation
414Which invariable superiority relationship
415Is also manifest but ever more comprehensively
417Cosmic-integrity-guaranteeing effectiveness
418Of the always synergetic and syntropic
420Of comprehensively operative generalized intellect
421Over the always energetic and entropic local
423Which are exclusively operative
424Only as local terminal special case episodes
425All of which principles succincdy elucidate
426The necessitous nature of Universe’s grand design strategy
427For installing developing and maintaining
428The complex problem-solving humans
429And evolving their complex ecological support
430Upon our local Universe monitoring planet Earth
432By elimination of all self-deception that the highest probability
434Of its metaphysical capabilities can occur
435And do so within cosmic evolution’s critical time limits
436And because it is also true
437That only by elimination oč all this self-deception
438Can this self-discovery be accomplished
439Because the a priori otherness
440Inherent in the fact of self’s birth
441And essential to the awareness
443Wherefor comes full realization
444Of the omni-interdependence
446Which if cultivated instead of frustrated
447Will increase synergetically
448To provide total physical success of all humanity Truthful self-discovery being the initial step Toward humanity’s ultimately qualifying
451Naked ignorant and helpless
452Endowed with the few conscious drives
453Of hunger thirst procreation curiosity and fascination
455And only through millions of years
456Of often painful trial-and-error experiences
458That our muscles and physical power
460461To our mind’s Universe-embracing comprehensions Wherefor in the trial-and-error struggle for survival Lasting throughout the past
463Those exceptional individuals
464Who have been fortunate enough
465To be able to earn the right to live
467By proving that they had special capabilities
468Which seemed functionally essential
469To continuance of the successful heirs
471Who only by force of superior
472Bodily size strength and cunning
474Had originally commandeered
475476The supposedly limited resources
477And as yet have the superior weapons
478With which to sustain those claims
480Full life-support franchise
481Which has always been accorded
484Usually sustained in the past
486Has been progressively extended
488First to include primary school years
489After which came successively high school
491Then post graduate and doctoral years
493And now with full life support becoming feasible
495Will soon become spontaneously extended
497To cover all the living years
499And with life time fellowships for all
501Of the defensive inferiority complexes
502And the historical survival fears
503Of all people of all circumstances
506Humanity’s urge to learn for itself
507By direct experience and observation
508How most effectively to comprehend phenomena Instead of judging and guessing opinionatedly As a consequence of credos and dogmas
509Relayingly inculcated by others
510And with all survival fears of all people eliminated By universal FULL-LIFE-SPAN Fellowships
513Of the cosmic functions of humanity
514Humans will swiftly develop their innate urge
516Thus qualifying themselves to participate
517In producing services to all humanity
518Wherefor the most spontaneous
519And popularly sought for privilege of individuals
520Will be to qualify for membership
521On humanity’s research and development teams
522Or on its equally significant
523Production and service teams
525For participation in amateur athletics
526Such activity having become
528The concept of earning a living
529And with the majority of humanity
530Engaged in study and self disciplining
531Direct experimental discovery
532And familiarization with advantages to be gained
535Generalized scientific principles
536Governing all Universe events
538Of all wasteful daily travel
539To the 90 percent of all jobs
540Which are the non-wealth-producing
541Specialized bureaucratic jobs
543By both private public and governmental
545To keep people dependently obligated to them
546As well as too busy to make trouble
552553This having always been the prime strategy
554Of all the grand strategies
555Of all history’s power masters
556And with such daily travel elimination
558In world energy resource consumption
561When we recall (A) that science has standardized the quantifying
562Of energy characteristics and behaviors
563In terms of lifting a given weight
564A given distance outwardly from Earth
565In a given quantity of time
566As for instance the work done
567In lifting one pound one foot in one minute
568I.e. in foot-pounds per minute
569Or gram-centimeters per second
570And (B) that it has also been discovered by geophysics
571That each gallon of petroleum
572Photosynthesized from Sun radiation
574Regeneratively proliferated by ecological organisms
575Harvested and buryingly stored
576As concentrated fossil residues
578By wind water and gravitational power investment
579Is so long drawn out a process
582One million U.S.A. 1960 dollars worth of energy
583As combined work pressure and heat
584And chemical interexchanging quantities
585Stated in scientifically defined constants
587Over the requisite millenniums of time
588Necessary to produce each gallon of petroleum
592At which electrical energy is charged to us today By the public utility companies Stated on our monthly bills
593In money units for each kilowatt hour Delivered to us of that much energy
594Wherefor in Cosmic Costing Of the regenerative affairs Of Physical Universe
595Wherein all metabolic interexchanging
598Of electron-rest-mass value
599Each average automobile commuter
600Costs nature several million dollars each day To go to his ecopolitical-system-invented job For which work the economic system Usually pays these right-to-live earners Far less than one hundred dollars a day While less than 10 percent of them Produce any real wealth
601Of direct human life support
602Which means that a few humans
603Who pooled together enough money
605To poke pipes deeply in the Earth Are tapping Universe’s progressive Local energy accumulating
606Which when attaining a critical mass magnitude Some ten billions of years hence probably Has been designed to inaugurate a new star To replace others which have burned out
607All of which energy accumulating
608Cost Universe the one million dollars per each gallon Which the human needs exploiters
609Misassume to have cost nothing Wherefor they take for themselves What the money-game calls "pure” profit
610Over and above the cost of their mechanical operation
611And sell a million dollars cosmic-cost-gallon For less than one cosmic-cost paper dollar Which million-čor-one is not difficult to do And dwarfs the historical folly Of the American Indians
612Who sold the Island of Manhattan in New York
615And with the popularly proven adequacy Of life support for all humans And with Universal recognition That being born
616Makes it mandatory upon world society
617That each human is entitled
618To healthful growthful lifelong support Constructive and instructive travel
619And access to the full inventory
620Of information and knowledge and news And all of the thus far accumulated wisdom 90 percent of humanity will spontaneously Disengage from their specious “jobs” And 90 percent of all the modern Fireproof business buildings of the world Will become vacated by the obsolete non-wealth-producing Exclusively money or political-kudos-making businesses Permitting those buildings’ conversion
621Into dwelling studio facilities
622Having all contemporary conveniences
624Most of which conveniences are utterly lacking Or are only inadequately provided
625In the slum flats and squatteries
626In which the majority of humanity now dwells
627All of which foregoing changes
628And their elimination of the survival fears Exploitation of which always has underlain All trade union management and political strategies Will permit technological automation
629To produce at 24 hours per day Rather than for only eight hours
630While computer automated travel facility booking
631And video-automated matchings
632Of all “availables” with all “wanteds”
633Will be operative as a 24-hour information services continuum
634Eliminating all newspapers’
635Personal want and merchandise advertising
636With vast savings of the newsprint forests
637And with satellite sensoring
638Of each and all humans’ positive and negative
639Individual electromagnetic field responses
640To given problem solution propositions
642By computerized world monitors
643And with world around Satellite relayed telemation
644And universal cable TV feedback
647Humanity will come to know instandy
649Reactions and dispositions are
650In respect to each and all problems
652And all humanity will dare to yield spontaneously
653To the will of the majority ,
656The effect will be swiftly manifest
657And the majority can immediately alter the course
658Without any negative scapegoating
660Its many similar ramifications
661When compounded with our now proven capability
662To house and service all humanity
664We heretofore have ever experienced
665Plus our organized knowledge
666Of how to provide all humanity
667With an annual energy advantage
668Equivalent to the U.S.A.’s of 1972
670While simultaneously phasing-out
671672All use of fossil fuels and atomic energy
673And deriving our sustainable energy supply
674Entirely from our annual energy income
675Of Sun power and gravity effects
676Ever operative around our planet
679Eruptive and thermal sources
683And release all of humanity’s
684Highest production technology
685From killingry into livingry production
686And a world around computerized
687Integrated life support system
688And with all the foregoing events
689Humanity will be reoriented
692To its syntropic circulatory
694Cosmic ecology regenerating functions
695All of the foregoing will release
696Our minds to perform their unique
700In support of which functioning
702Amongst all known organisms
703Were given conscious intellectual access
704To the family of exclusively mathematically stateable
706Ever demonstrably governing
709And because the meaning of design
713Are omni-interaccommodative
715That none ever contradict any others
716717The family of thus far scientifically discovered Generalized principles constitutes a cosmic design To which human mind has
722Intellectual integrity context
724In 1996, three chemists, Dr. Harold W. Kroto from Great Britain's University of Sussex and Dr. Robert F. Curl and Dr. Richard E. Smalley from Rice University in Houston, Texas, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They made their discovery by zapping graphite with a laser beam and mixing the resulting carbon vapors with a stream of helium. They found the molecules made up of sixty carbon atoms arranged like a soccer ball in a geodesic sphere that resembled R. Buckminster Fuller's well-known geodesic dome. At Kroto's suggestion, they graciously named their discovery, C60, "buckminsterfullerene"—the "buckyball" for short. Their work opened an entirely new branch of chemistry and gave scientists a greater understanding of how nature bonds carbon atoms together.
725Robert F. Curl wrote to me after notification of the trio's Nobel Prize, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting R. Buckminster Fuller in person, but no aware person could live for decades in the twentieth century without meeting him many times in his work."
726Sir Harold W. Kroto, in addition to being a co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel, has received the Longstaff Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize, and the Moet Hennessy/Louis Vuitton Science pour I'Art Prize. He has spoken at the Buckminster Fuller Institute in California.