The icosahedral CH cage was mentioned in 1965 as a possible topological structure. Eiji Osawa predicted the existence of C in 1970. He noticed that the structure of a corannulene molecule was a subset of a football shape, and he hypothesised that a full ball shape could also exist. Japanese scientific journals reported  his idea, but it did not reach Europe or the Americas.
In 1996, Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of this class of molecules. C and other fullerenes were later noticed occurring outside the laboratory.