Buckminster Fuller was an American inventor and architect best known for designing the geodesic dome, a strong, lightweight structure built from triangles — so influential that scientists later named a soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecule, buckminsterfullerene, after him when they discovered it echoed his dome's structure. He believed careful design could help solve big problems like housing, energy, and world hunger. He spent his life encouraging people to think of Earth as a shared "spaceship" that everyone must take care of together.