BLOG - Chemistry

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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 […]

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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 […]

Lou Woodley

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 […]

Akshat Rathi

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. […]

Ashutosh Jogalekar

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 […]

Martin Fenner

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 […]

Ashutosh Jogalekar

Paul Crutzen’s Other Big Idea

Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen will be at Lindau this year, along with his fellow recipient F. Sherwood Rowland. The two along with Mario Molina contributed to one of the most significant intersections of science with politics and public policy in the twentieth century when they discovered the effects of chlorofluorocarbons and other chemical compounds on […]

Beatrice Lugger

Peter Agre, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2003, Interview 2009

00:32 Channel-Mediated Water Permeability? 02:17 A 28kD Protein 06:36 Deciphering the Structure 09:33 New Frontiers In Coproduction with JoVe.com Sponsored by Mars. published June 2009

Ashutosh Jogalekar

Microwaves, magnetism and machine grease: a paean to tool-driven science

John Turton Randall was trying hard, real hard. For some time now, the University of Birmingham physicist was focusing on trying to improve the features of a machine which transmitted and received electromagnetic waves. A few years back this would have been just another intriguing academic problem for a physicist to crack, but this time it […]

Beatrice Lugger

Martin Chalfie, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2008, Interview 2009

The animal is transparent: 04:04 Ghia Euskirchen 09:12 Lessons from the GFP-Story In Coproduction with JoVe.com July 2009 Sponsored by Mars.

Beatrice Lugger

Roger Y. Tsien, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2008, Interview 2009

00:32 Developing Genetically Encoded Macromolecular Indicators 08:02 Infrared-Fluorescent Proteins, IFPs 10:54 On the Nobel Prize and the Importance of Team Effort In Coproduction with JoVe.com Sponsored by Mars.Ro – July 2009

Beatrice Lugger

Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate Chemistry 1996, Interview 2009

Competition and Motives: In this interview during the 59th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting in 2009 Sir Harold Kroto talks about competition within science, the consequences of winning a Nobel Prize and he criticises teachers and educational policy makers who oppose creationism hesitantly.