Sir Harold Kroto always tried to fit in with his peers, but with difficulty because of his true

personality, which he use to despises of it, since it was supposedly an odd name in Britain. After the war between England and Germany, Sir Harold's father set up a small factory, producing small balloons. After school or during the holidays, Sir Harold would work there as a replacement or mechanic, this gave Sir Harold some experience in problem solving skills. Although his parents lost everything and were broke, they tried to find the best education possible for Sir Harold. "I always felt that my parents had a really raw deal, as did almost everyone born in Europe at the turn of the Century," he recalled when he received his Nobel Prize in 1996. "The First World War took place while they were teenagers, then the Depression struck and Hitler came to power while they were young adults. They had to leave their home country and then the Second World War broke out and they had to leave their home again. When my father was 45 he had to find a new profession, when he was 55 he set up his business again. Kroto indicated that his father had early ambitions to become a dress designer but ended up operating a graphics business that printed images on balloons. Kroto's parents' ordeal no doubt influenced the values and philosophies that he adopted as an adult. A self-described humanist and "devout atheist," he had difficulty accepting the concept of a "humanitarian" God. Kroto would also come to reject the notion that the "good" of the community must override individual rights. That notion, he believed, only justified the oppression of individuals by the state. As such, he would later become a supporter of Amnesty International. In 1995, he launched the Vega Science Trust (www.vega.org.uk) to create science films of sufficiently high quality for broadcast on UK network television. He is now heavily involved with GEOSET a Global Educational Outreach for Science, Engineering, and Technology programme (www.geoset.info and www.geoset.fsu.edu) which he initiated after moving to Florida State University. GEOSET seeks to exploit the revolutionary creative dynamics the Internet (which Harry calls it the GooYouWiki-World) to improve the general level of science understanding an awareness worldwide. Numerous universities in the US, UK, Japan, Croatia and Spain are now contributing to GEOSETs rapidly growing, globally accessible freely available cache of science educational material in modular form designed to help teachers. A most exciting aspect of this initiative has been the revelation that graduate and undergraduate students are often exceptionally good at creating educational modules. He has numerous awards including the Copley Medal, Faraday Lectureship of the Royal Society as well as the Tilden Lectureship and Longstaff Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Other awards include the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Science pour lArt prize and the Italgas Prize for Innovation. He holds some 36 honorary degrees from universities all over the world and is a Freeman of the City of Torino. From 2004 he has been on the Board of Scientific Governors at Scripps Institute. He was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.