Though nanometer-level imaging has come far with transmission electron microscopy, Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman (Nobel Prize 2011, Chemistry) warned his master class audience on Tuesday that today’s images will seem primitive a few years in the future. For now, the five students—all but one of them female—presented research at the edge of what this writer […]
The key goal of chemical science in the nineteenth and twentieth century was to understand how atoms come together to form molecules through chemical bonds. The focus was thus on understanding the covalent interactions that link atoms together, interactions that are made possible by the sharing of electrons. The theory of chemical bonding achieved its […]
Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz received the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry for telling us how the molecular musicians in living organisms play the tune of life. Almost any molecular mechanism in our body provides an illuminating example of a superbly choreographed ballet, but Kobilka and Lefkowitz shed light on the motions of one of […]
“Quantum theory has opened to us the microscopic world of particles, atoms and photons,” explained Nobel Laureate Serge Haroche, who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics with David Wineland. In this sentence, Haroche answered why two physicists certainly belong onstage at the 63rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting for chemistry. Haroche’s talk, called ‘Controlling Photons […]
This morning my alarm rings at 5:50 a.m.. It is my Science Breakfast Morning of the week: ‘How does Surface Science Contribute to Solve Global Energy and Environmental Issues?’. Star guest of this event upon invitation of the Republic of Korea is Gerhard Ertl, the Surface Master and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2007. Arriving […]
Many participants of this year’s Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau show a specific interest in Green Chemistry. Sustainabilty and advancemtents for the future are on their list. As there are really many expressing this certain interest, I hope no one is angry with me, that I did not choose her or him. For example these […]
Scientists come in two flavors, unifiers and diversifiers. Unifiers try to find the common threads underlying disparate phenomena. Diversifiers try to find more disparate phenomena for the unifiers to unify. Occasionally a diversifier may wear a unifier’s hat and consolidate what he knows and sometimes a unifier may take a break from his grand goal […]
One of my personal favorites of the upcoming 62. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is Dan Shechtman. He is not only an excellent scientist. He had the nerves and verve to fight for his findings for more than one decade. And not at least the quasi-periodic crystals are so beautiful! In this sense Dan Shechtman, Nobel […]
Strawberry red, tangerine orange, banana yellow, honeydew green and plum purple. These are some of the cheesy names for the glowing molecules that were developed in Roger Tsien’s laboratory. To be fair, these names do make one thing clear: Roger Tsien has managed to design and produce fluorescent molecules of almost every colour in the […]
Between the laws of the universe and the rules of life lies a bridge. That bridge, said Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Lehn today, is chemistry. Lehn made his point by asking a simple and intriguing question at the start of his lecture: how does matter become complex? How did elementary particles eventually gave rise to the […]
In her lecture today, Ada Yonath compared her scientific quest to determine the structure of the ribosome to a climb of the Mount Everest. Time after time she thought that she had reached the peak, only to discover a taller summit. While her journey was long and arduous, Yonath eventually reached the top and was rewarded with a […]
Ada Yonath won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for her work on the structure and function of the ribosome. Born in Jerusalem, she has spent the majority of her scientific career in Israel and is currently Director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly at the Weizmann […]
