Buckyballs and fullerenes—the family, or allotrope, of carbon molecules to which buckyballs belong—were first discovered by Rice University professors Richard Smalley and Robert Curl, Jr., and University of Sussex professor Sir Harold Kroto. The team experiment involved vaporizing a carbon surface via an intense laser pulse and mixing the vaporized carbon with an inert gas (helium) to form clusters. Analysis of the clusters showed that a very stable form of molecule, C₆₀, was abundant.

With properties such as high heat resistance and superconductivity, fullerenes are heavily studied in topics like medical research, consumer products (e.g. bicycle frames), and industrial and electrical applications. The discovery of buckyballs opened up the field of fullerene chemistry and led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for Smalley, Curl, and Kroto.