Sir Harry Kroto, Nobel Laureate for Chemistry - 1996
In 1996 Professor Kroto was jointly awarded the Nobel Laureate for chemistry with Richard Smalley and Robert Curl, for the discovery of buckyballs, and later that year he received a Knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II. Harold Kroto was born in 1939 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and brought up in Bolton, Lancashire. He graduated in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1961 and in 1964 received his PhD there for research with R N Dixon on high-resolution electronic spectra of free radicals produced by flash photolysis. After two years postdoctoral research in electronic and microwave spectroscopy at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, he spent one year at Bell Laboratories NJ studying liquid phase interactions by Raman spectroscopy and he also carried out studies in Quantum Chemistry. He started his academic career at the University of Sussex (Brighton) in 1967, where he became a professor in 1985 and in 1991 he was made a Royal Society Research Professor. In 1992 he received International Prize for New Materials from American Physical Society, in 1994 Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize - Moet Hennessy/Louis Vuitton Science Pour l'Art Prize, in 1995 honorary degrees from University of Sheffield and University of Kingston Since 1990 he has been chairman of the editorial board of the Chemical Society Reviews.

Dr. Pulickel M. Ajayan, Henry Burlage Professor of Eng., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York
A pioneer in nanotechnology, Prof. Ajayan has been one of the key figures in the development of carbon nanotube technologies. He is currently the Henry Burlage chaired professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He is a well-known materials researcher in areas of nanomaterials, electron microscopy, and nanocomposites. His research goals are oriented towards developing multifunctional nanostructures and hybrid platforms that would have applications in diverse fields such as structural composites, sensors, electronic devices and bio-medical applications. Prof. Ajayan has authored or co-authored more than 175 publications, two books, and his work has received more than 6500 citations. He is on the editorial boards of several materials and nanotechnology journals. Prof. Ajayan has won several awards such as the Burton medal from the Microscopy Society of America, the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, the senior research award from RPI, the National Science Foundation CAREER proposal award and the Hadfield gold medal for his B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering at Banaras Hindu University, India. He received his doctoral degree from Northwestern University in 1989 and had research positions in many countries including Japan, France and Germany.