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Harry Kroto's first research result was the Electronic Spectrum of CBr. This was Kroto's PhD research, 1961-1964, at the University of 91ֱ��.

Harry Kroto speaking about his first result as a researcher: 

"The year was 1962 when Simons and Yarwod published a paper on the flash photolysis of bromoform CCl3Br at low resolution which indicated they had a nice result, the detection of the CBr radical. My supervisor Richard Dixon suggested that I look for this spectrum at high-resolution using our 21 foot Eagle spectrometer. This was quite easy to do and I did reproduce their results with our instrument.

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I called Richard down to the lab to look at the results. He immediately whipped out a magnifier and looked up and said “this is beautiful”. I said “what” and had look myself and saw the most beautiful rotational line structure.

Sir Harry Kroto

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"This was my first result as a researcher and of course I shall never forget that moment after a year of negative results. The bands at A and B were a puzzle and I suggested they were upper to lower and lower to upper transitions which Richard in lecture said I had suggested because I did not know they were forbidden! Of course, I did not at the time know anything about forbidden transitions but I was right because rotation mixes the states and they become allowed."

'High-resolution study of the spectrum of the CBr radical' (PDF, 605KB), R Dixon and H Kroto, 1963.

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Other papers

• '', H Kroto, Ohio State University, 1966.

Abstract: A new absorption spectrum, at 3327A˚, has been discovered in the flash photolysis of cyanogen azide, NCN3. Rotational analysis of the bands identified them as belonging to a 1Πu←1Δg transition of NCN. The known 3Πu←3Σ−g transition is also observed and its proximity, at 3290A˚, facilitates the study of the relative rates of production and disappearance of the 1Δ−g states. This comparison offers good evidence that the 3Σ−g state is the ground state of NCN and that the main primary process under the conditions used in this study is: NCN3→hνNCN(1Δ)+N2

• '', H Kroto, T F Morgan and H H Sheena, 1970.

Abstract: The analysis of a new electronic absorption spectrum observed during the flash photolysis of cyanogen azide, NCN3, in the region 3 327 Å indicates that the spectrum belongs to a ¹Π_u–¹Δ_g transition of NCN.

The ¹Δ_g state is metastable with respect to the ³Σ^-_g ground state. The bond distance in the ¹Δ_g state is 1.228 5 Å. The value of the Renner splitting parameter, εω2, for the ¹Π_u state has been determined as −84.2 cm⁻¹.