Buckminsterfullerene was first generated in 1984 by Eric Rohlfing, Donald Cox and Andrew Kaldor using a laser to vaporize carbon in a supersonic helium beam. In 1985 their work was repeated by Harold Kroto, James R. Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley at Rice University, who recognized the structure of C60 as buckminsterfullerene. Kroto, Curl and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of buckminsterfullerene and the related class of molecules, the fullerenes.