Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded 114
An anonymous reader writes "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2005 has been jointly awarded to Robert H. Grubbs (California Institute of Technology), Richard R. Schrock (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Yves Chauvin (Institut Français du Pétrole) for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis." Advanced [PDF] and supplementary [PDF] information is also available from the Nobel Prize site.
Grubbs is great (Score:5, Interesting)
I took a class (Ch41, Chemistry of Covalent Compounds) from Professor Grubbs, and he is an excellent teacher as well as a great scientist. He can also take a joke. The following was published in Nothing, an unofficial humor paper published by a couple of bored Techers, and based by a standard lecture that Grubbs gave to every Organic Chemistry class before their first test.
Embarassed of a Nobel prize? (Score:5, Interesting)
He wants to live reclusively, and doesn't plan to go to Sweden to receive his medal.
Source: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,
translation: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pa
awesome potential (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's interesting how many nobel prizes have been given for work on the C=C bond: Diels-Alder, Wittig, reduction, oxidation... I think that more nobels have been given for x-ray techniques than anything else, but this must be well up there. (Of course that depends on how broadly you classify your groupings.)
But this particular synthesis is already producing some amazing results in bioactive materials, and it should be a strong industrial technique, given its apparent robustness. Back when I was doing organic chemistry, I was trying to make a weird cyclopropene using a synthesis that was multi-step and very low yield. I wish I'd read about this.
Good Show (Score:3, Interesting)
Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ??? (Score:1, Interesting)
A Chem Nobel Prize that actually goes to chemists! (Score:5, Interesting)
Dumbing a complicated subject down (Score:5, Interesting)
This has to be the worst quote I've ever heard describing Grubbs' catalyst. When I woke up this morning and heard that Grubbs had won the Nobel I wondered what the brief description of his work was going to be, and I honestly have to say I was amazingly disappointed with it. However this is part of a larger problem that I've encountered often especially on this webpage, how do you explain complicated subjects to the uninformed masses? How do you explain detailed chemistry to computer geeks? In some cases a pretty simplistic idea is transferred successfully, but this is the exception rather than the rule. IMO, the comments left about the story tend to further complicate the matter.
Having use chemistry developed by Grubbs I'll provide a brief description of his remarkable achievements in the field of organic synthesis (one of the serveral fields Grubbs has impacted [Grubbs is however an organometallic / inorganic chemist]). Organic synthesis is the study of building complext molecules from simple starting materials. The "goal" of organic synthesis is to make compounds with biological activity, e.g. new drugs. Many of the target compounds are initially isolated from nature, chemist then try to replicate them in the lab environment. One of the catalysts Grubbs developed allowed for synthesis of a particularly common structural feature (I'm thinking of cyclic structures, there are more, I know) and it opened whole new doors in terms of synthetic routes that one could take to complete a molecule. It was fairly evident in the mid 90s that his work had a huge impact on the synthetic community and it was apparent he would win the nobel, it was just a matter of time.
Re:awesome potential (Score:2, Interesting)
I was in an advanced organic synthesis class. The project was "make something new. Preferably by an unusual synthesis." My first project is not discussable these days, given the current political climate, but my second project was making a cyclopropene, turning it into a cyclohexene (!), and then turning THAT into a spiro compound with one six and one seven membered ring. (!!!) It was way out there on the weirdness scale, but the problem was that the cyclopropene was, as one might expect, very suseptible to polymerization, so I mostly ended up making round-bottom flasks full of solid brown tar. I could dig up the papers from which I was working, but this was, uh, 15 years ago (eeeek!) and I can't remember all the details off the top of my head. I can't imagine what one could do with a metathesis reaction, although I suspect you'd spend most of your time just synthesizing the catalyst. Most of those look like boogers to make, and not very many were/are commercially available (and those that are probably cost hundreds of dollars a gram.)
Re:Fuel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:awesome potential (Score:3, Interesting)