‘Chemistry and physics: one needs the other’
“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 […]
Energy for Early Birds
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 […]
Green Chemistry – a focal point in Lindau
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 […]
Chemistry and diversity: Inseparable partners
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 […]
An expert always checks his own results
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 […]
Roger Tsien: a rainbow of fluorescence
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 […]
Jean-Marie Lehn: an evolutionary chemist
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 […]
Climbing the Everest with polar bears
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 […]
An Interview with Ada Yonath
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 […]
Interview with Jean-Marie Lehn: Chemistry is trying to answer the biggest questions
After the lecture session on Thursday, I had a 15 minute slot to ‘interview’ Jean-Marie Lehn. who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Donald Cram and Charles Pederson for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity. Prof. Lehn is more commonly known as the father of supramolecular chemistry. […]
Mountains Beyond Mountains
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed, the measure of our intellectual maturity is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.- G.W. Allport,Becoming, 1955 Science in the popular mind consists of a series of "Eureka!" moments. Such moments […]
Roger Tsien: Science should be beautiful
Today I talked with Roger Tsien about his research leading to the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP). I learned that visually beautiful research results are the best motivation, and that winning a Nobel Prize doesn’t mean that papers and grants come easily – you might still have […]