Young researchers give us real insights in their home, life and Lindau experiences
Seven young researchers have become video experts during the last weeks and will do even more this week. They have interviewed their supporters back home, did a actual home story of their lives and will show us their Lindau experiences from now on. Before we start I’d like to introduce the team (five women and […]
Sir Harry Kroto: the Third Man
Sir Harry Kroto gave a talk yesterday that was unlike any other lecture at the Lindau Meetings so far. Kroto didn’t talk about the work he had done, or about his life as a scientist. Instead, he gave a dazzling presentation showing scores of images to his audience. He kept shifting gears from art to […]
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 […]
Infections that cause cancer – Harald zur Hausen
Even if you adore red meat, you’ll put off your big juicy steak by hearing what Harald zur Hausen has to say about it. At the 61st Lindau meeting, the Nobel laureate spoke about his current hypothesis about why beef causes colorectal cancer. He thinks it might contain a nasty pathogen that infects us that then causes […]
Researcher portrait: Madhurima Benekareddy
lindaunobelMadhurima Benekareddy is a 27-year-old researcher standing at the cross-roads of psychology and neuroscience. She researches the effects of trauma on the brain in its delicate stages of development, when we are children and adolescents, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. The young brain is more plastic, and therefore can be particularly badly affected by negative – or positive – events. Trauma […]
Jonathan Carlson tries to understand how HIV adapts when it is attacked
Yesterday’s opening ceremony was concluded with a panel session that featured Bill Gates, Nobel laureate Ada Yonath, Sandra Chisamba and Jonathan Carlson. Together they discussed how we should deal with threats to global health, such as HIV and malaria, and how young scientists could be stimulated to research these important, but relatively neglected topics. Jonathan Carlson was […]
Laying down the global health gauntlet
The panel on global health at the opening ceremony of the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau well and truly laid the gauntlet down to young researchers from around the world. On the panel was: Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Ada Yonath, Noble Laureate in […]
Sandra Chishimba and her fight against Malaria
Today the 61. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting will be openend and Sandra Chishimba will play a special role: She will take part at a panel discussion together with Bill Gates, Nobel Laureate Ada Yonath (Chemistry 2009) and Jonathan Carlson (Microsoft Research) – maybe because Malaria is the main topic of her life. She has battled […]
The challenges and allure of protein design: A memo for this year’s young researchers
An inspiration from the birth of aviation A few weeks ago I visited the small coastal town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. Kitty Hawk is where the Wright brothers made their epoch-making first powered flight. Big stones mark the start and end points of the flight. There is a huge monument on top of […]
From messy to magical: Preparing for the future of medicine
In the early 1940s, as war raged over the continent, the British mathematician Freeman Dyson and the Indian physicist Harish Chandra were taking a walk in Cambridge. Harish Chandra was studying theoretical physics under the legendary Paul Dirac while Dyson was getting ready to spend a depressing time calculating bombing statistics at Bomber Command. “I […]
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 […]