Today's major global challenge of sustainability, the desperately needed solutions possibly offered by rapid advances in scientific knowledge, and wide public use of high-technology products make it increasingly important that we all have a window on current scientific developments; a window that enables young and old to share in the excitement and satisfaction of scientific research, to appreciate the potential benefits, and to take delight in that most human characteristic: curiosity and asking questions.

Attractive scientific images provide a natural catalyst to our curiosity. My own interests have always spanned many areas from scientific research to graphic design. As a young Sheffield student I enjoyed designing magazine covers, posters and murals. I am sure my fascination with form and design, structure and symmetry, has been a great help in my scientific research. It helped in the discovery of a new class of pure carbon (fullerene) molecules with elegant symmetries and novel cage structures that delight everyone - even the very young - for which my colleagues and I were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996.

Nature never ceases to provide stunningly beautiful structures, often helping to reveal the elegance of the underlying science. The beautiful images on this website capture this beauty. We at the KRi hope that they stimulate your curiosity, as they do ours, to encourage you to ask questions about the processes that give rise to these elegant structures, and impart a flavour about what it is like to discover something beautiful and new about the world. Furthermore these images give a unique insight into the underlying science and encourage us to strive for new advances that promise future humanitarian benefits of research for society in general.

I encourage you to study the images on this site and put any questions they might stimulate to the scientists whose research programmes created them. Why not submit some images of your own that you'd like to use to communicate with others? The website site is part a scientific Global Educational Outreach (GEO) network. Use the links provided to explore other sites including exciting and informative educational multimedia educational presentations.