Abstract 

My PhD supervisor Harry Kroto and two of his co-workers won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for a discovery they had made 11 years earlier in 1985. This was the discovery of the “fullerenes” – a new and unexpected form of the most important element in chemistry – carbon. An element chemists thought they knew more about than virtually any other. 

This discovery would eventually give birth to a new field of science – Nanotechnology. However, it was 5 long years before this would happen. At the time of the discovery only a billionth of a gram of material was made at a time, and it only fleetingly existed for the duration of the experiment – perhaps a thousandth of a second. As such, experimental research interest in this new material was meagre.  

5 years after the discovery (in 1990) a breakthrough was achieved by two physicists working in an unrelated field. They were able to synthesize fullerenes in gram quantities. With this, scientists were able to hold the material in their hands, and an explosion of research interest took place. 

I started my PhD research on fullerenes a few days before this explosion took place. With the material now available, it became vitally important to show that this new material was as important as it had initially seemed – i.e., to prove its discoverers should be awarded the Nobel prize. This involved doing a lot of hard work very quickly.  

This lecture will recount the events that led up to the discovery and the events that led up to the 1990 break-through – and, from a personal perspective, recount what it was like to be a PhD student caught up in, and swept along by, the resulting explosion of research interest and the birth of nanotechnology (from someone who was there). 

1996年，我的博士生导师Harry Kroto和他的两位同事因他们在1985年发现了的 “富勒烯（Fullerenes）” ，获得了诺贝尔化学奖。 “富勒烯”是化学家们非常熟悉且了解的元素，也是化学中最重要的元素——“碳” 的一种意想不到的新形式。"富勒烯"的发现最终也催生了一个新的科学领域——纳米技术。 

然而，这一切都要在漫长的 5 年后才能实现。在刚发现这种新材料的时候，每次只能制造出十亿分之一克的材料，而这十亿分之一克的材料在实验过程中也只是昙花一现，也许只有千分之一秒。因此，科研界对这种新材料的实验研究也是兴趣不大。 

在发现“富勒烯”的 5 年后（1990 年），两位从事非相关领域工作的物理学家取得了突破性进展——他们合成出了克级数量的富勒烯。随着科学家们可以逐渐掌握这种材料，相关研究兴趣也随之爆发。 

我就是在这股研究浪潮爆发的前几天开始我的博士研究的。伴随着富勒烯这种材料的产生，论证它的重要性就变得至关重要，例如，证明它的发现者应该获得诺贝尔奖。而这就需要迅速完成大量艰苦的工作。 

本次讲座将介绍“富勒烯”的发现和相关的重大研究突破，并由亲历者从个人角度，讲述作为一名博士生被纳米技术的诞生所吸引，从而投身于相关研究的经历。 

Bio 

Prof. John Dennis gained his D.Phil. from the University of Sussex in 1993 under the supervision Harry Kroto. After publishing 30 papers in 3 years as a graduate student (including three in Nature), all his postdoctoral Research was conducted under internationally competitive personal research fellowships (from the Australian Research Council, The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation). He then gained tenure at Queen Mary University of London in the Department of Chemistry in 1999 and transferred to the Physics Department at the same institution with a promotion to a professorial position in 2005.  

He joined the department of Chemistry at XJTLU in October 2022. Immediately before this he worked as Professor at Zhejiang University for two years, being brought to China via a 'High-Level Foreign Expert Award' from the Zhejiang Province 1000 Talent Plan in 2020. He has published almost 100 papers on fullerenes that average over 80 citations per paper, generating an h-index of 42. 

1993 年，John Dennis教授在Harry Kroto的指导下获得了萨塞克斯大学的博士学位。作为一名研究生，他在 3 年内发表了 30 篇论文（其中 3 篇发表在《自然》杂志上），他之后的所有博士后研究都是在具有国际竞争力的个人研究奖学金（澳大利亚研究理事会、日本学术振兴会和德国洪堡基金会）的资助下进行的。他于 1999 年在伦敦玛丽女王大学化学系获得终身教职，并于 2005 年调入该校物理系，晋升为教授。 

John Dennis教授于 2022 年 10 月加入西交利物浦大学化学系。在此之前，他在2020年通过浙江省千人计划 “高层次外国专家奖” 任教于在浙江大学。他发表了近 100 篇关于 “富勒烯” 的论文，平均每篇论文被引用超过 80 次，H指数为 42。