Original: In 1985 , Harold Kroto ( then of the University of Sussex ) , James R. Heath , Sean O'Brien , Robert Curl and Richard Smalley , from Rice University , discovered C60 , and shortly thereafter came to discover the fullerenes .
Simplified: The fullerene was found in 1985 by Robert Curl , Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley at the University of Sussex and Rice University , and was named after Buckminster Fuller .