Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Scientist and researcher Sir Harry Kroto, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996, will speak at the University of North Carolina Wilmington at 6:30 p.m. Thurs., March 29, in Dobo Hall.

His speech, titled "Science, Society and Sustainability," will focus on the importance of science in education and why our youth should be encouraged to consider a degree in the sciences.

Kroto is the Eppes Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2004. He was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry while a faculty member at the University of Sussex, in Brighton, England, for the discovery of new forms of the element carbon, called fullerenes. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and served as president of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 2002 to 2004. He has received numerous awards such as the Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize (shared, 1994), the Copley Medal (2004) and the Faraday Award (2001). He holds honorary degrees from academic institutions around the world.

Kroto's appearance at UNC Wilmington is sponsored by the UNCW Department of Chemistry.

The event is free and open to the public.

Media contacts:

Sridhar Varadarajan, assistant professor of chemistry, 910.962.7350 or varadarajans@uncw.edu

Dana Fischetti, manager of news and media services, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu