Curl, Robert Floyd, Jr. (1933-...), an American physical chemist, discovered a new form of the element carbon called fullerene in 1985. Curl shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with his co-workers in the discovery, Richard E. Smalley of the United States and Sir Harold W. Kroto of the United Kingdom (see Kroto, Sir Harold; Smalley, Richard Errett). Their findings gave rise to an entirely new branch of chemistry concerned with the huge variety of fullerenes, hollow molecules made up of a large, even number of carbon atoms.