He was always prepared to entertain at least two totally crackpot ideas alongside every three rational ones and gained a reputation for being anti-intellectual - a nuts-and-bolts engineer who saw the road to human salvation throughout practical solutions to real problems.

His major invention, the Geodesic Dome, became and icon of the 60's, mushrooming up in hippie colonies around the world, although he designed it as a high-strength, low weight structure for the military. He envisaged whole cities built under climate controlled domes.

Perhaps unique among 20th century figures, Bucky is universally loved for his genius, his loopiness, and his supreme optimism about the ability of man to solve the world's problems by application of high-concept, low-tech solutions. He saw technology as a potentially benign force and suggested that the problem of resource scarcity would disappear with the establishment of a world government to handle equitable distribution. "Evolution," he said, "is integration of humanity." Such ideas are utopian, of course, but Fuller made them seem attainable through his detailed blueprints for a better future. And they have become increasingly influential as people search for an antidote to the effects of technology. It has been suggested, for example, that enormous domes could control the problem of air pollution by containing the effluents from power stations, oil refineries and other sources.

A one-time professor of poetry and a prolific public speaker on problems of planetary survival (he managed 120 engagements in one year), Fuller's writings sit on bookstore shelves alongside the works of such "New Age" writers as Shirley MacLaine and Fritjof Capra.

Prior to his death he led his own band, recording and touring the world. A huge part of Eric's documented career was spent as a sideman with Charles Mingus, possibly sounding best of all on Mingus at Antibes, recorded in 1960. Eric's compositions were far ahead of their time, having quirky unexpected elements that added to the roller coaster feeling you get when you listen. Many of these albums featured Woody Shaw, Booker Little, J.C. Moses, Richard Davis, and Bobby Hutcherson.