Harold Kroto

Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley vaporized graphite with a laser in cluster-beam experiments and found that carbon forms $\ce{C60}$, a remarkably stable closed cage of sixty atoms shaped like a football — buckminsterfullerene. The discovery revealed a third allotrope of carbon and founded fullerene chemistry. It paved the way to carbon nanotubes and the broader field of carbon nanomaterials.