Robert Floyd Curl, Jr. (born August 23, 1933) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for the discovery of fullerene (with the late Richard Smalley, also of Rice University, and Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex).

Born in Alice, Texas, United States, Curl received a B.A. from Rice Institute in 1954 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1957. Curl often attended the German table at Hanszen College at Rice University. However, he is more known in the residential college life at Rice University for being the first master of Lovett College.