Inventor/Innovator Buckminster Fuller

Visionary inventor, architect, engineer and more, R. Buckminster Fuller achieved considerable celebrity with his innovative geodesic dome structures.

Fuller, called Bucky by those who knew him, wrote 28 books and lectured all over the world about what amounts to "green living." He himself is credited with coining the terms synergistics, ephemeralization, and spaceship earth.

Many of his inventions, such as his Dymaxion car, were commercially unsuccessful, but his futuristic dome buildings and houses captured the public's imagination.

Fuller came from a line of non-conformists in Massachusetts and twice was kicked out of Harvard. He served in the Navy during World War I and worked a variety of jobs before moving to the North Carolina mountains and working at Black Mountain College. There he created his first domed structure made from lightweight plastics. Construction of his very large geodesic domes in America and elsewhere began in the 1950s and made his name a household word.

Fuller died of a heart attack in 1983 at age 88.