Nobel Prize research

In the summer of 1963, I learned that I had won the American Chemical Society Award in Petroleum Chemistry for my work on Friedel-Crafts chemistry. It was a most welcome recognition for someone who only a few years earlier had fled his native country and started all over on a far-away continent. Although I have received numerous other awards and recognitions over the years, with the exception of the Nobel Prize, no other award touched me as much. 1 remember that my first ACS award carried with it a check for 5,000. My research director for some reason believed that a company employee was not... 

Was 1 prepared for the Nobel Prize 1 probably was, because over the years friends and colleagues had hinted that 1 had been nominated many times (of course, nobody really knows anything about the selection in advance). It is frequently said that the Nobel Prize represents the de facto end of the active research career of the recipients as they become public figures with little time left for scholarly work. However, I was determined that no prize or recognition would substantially change my life (see also Chapter 14). Furthermore, Judy, my life part-... 

Most chemists want to avoid the paper-and-pencil type of work that theoretical chemistry in its truest form entails. However, keep in mind that it is precisely for this kind of painstaking and exacting research that many Nobel prizes have been awarded. This book will focus almost exclusively on the knowledge needed to effectively use existing computer software for molecular modeling. 

For developing osmium catalyzed oxidation methods for preparing chiral com pounds of high optical pu rity Professor K Barry Sharpless (Scripps Research Institute) shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in chemistry... 

Some exceptionally gifted researchers have made contributions to the topics we discuss here, and their impact on these and other areas of inquiry have earned them special recognition. Specifically, we note that Einstein,. Svedberg, Staudinger, and Flory have all been awarded the Nobel Prize, and Stokes and Poiseuille have been honored by having units named after them. These are but a few of the superstars whose work we encounter in this chapter. 

The use of radioactive tracers was pioneered by Georg von Hevesy, a Hungarian physical chemist, who received the Nobel Prize in 1943 for his work on radioactive indicators (1). Radioisotopes have become indispensable components of most medical and life science research strategies, and in addition the technology is the basis for numerous industries focused on the production and detection of radioactive tracers. Thousands of radioactive tracers have been synthesized and are commercially available. These are used worldwide in tens of thousands of research laboratories. 

The first commercial synthesis of a vitamin occurred ia 1933 when the Reichsteia approach was employed to manufacture vitamin C (6). AH 13 vitamins ate available ia commercial quantities, and their biological functions have largely been estabUshed (7). A Hst of Nobel prize winners associated with vitamin research is given ia Table 2. 

In small-molecule crystallography the phase problem was solved by so-called direct methods (recognized by the award of a Nobel Prize in chemistry to Jerome Karle, US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, and Herbert Hauptman, the Medical Foundation, Buffalo). For larger molecules, protein aystallographers have stayed at the laboratory bench using a method pioneered by Max Perutz and John Kendrew and their co-workers to circumvent the phase problem. This method, called multiple isomorphous replacement... 

A new chapter in the uses of semiconductors arrived with a theoretical paper by two physicists working at IBM s research laboratory in New York State, L. Esaki (a Japanese immigrant who has since returned to Japan) and R. Tsu (Esaki and Tsu 1970). They predicted that in a fine multilayer structure of two distinct semiconductors (or of a semiconductor and an insulator) tunnelling between quantum wells becomes important and a superlattice with minibands and mini (energy) gaps is formed. Three years later, Esaki and Tsu proved their concept experimentally. Another name used for such a superlattice is confined heterostructure . This concept was to prove so fruitful in the emerging field of optoelectronics (the merging of optics with electronics) that a Nobel Prize followed in due course. The central application of these superlattices eventually turned out to be a tunable laser. 

The discovery of the ci-helix structure was only one of many achievements that led to Pauling s Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954. The official citadon for the prize wa.s for his research into the nature of die chemical bond and its application to die elucidadon of the structure of complex substances. ... 

What molecular architecture couples the absorption of light energy to rapid electron-transfer events, in turn coupling these e transfers to proton translocations so that ATP synthesis is possible Part of the answer to this question lies in the membrane-associated nature of the photosystems. Membrane proteins have been difficult to study due to their insolubility in the usual aqueous solvents employed in protein biochemistry. A major breakthrough occurred in 1984 when Johann Deisenhofer, Hartmut Michel, and Robert Huber reported the first X-ray crystallographic analysis of a membrane protein. To the great benefit of photosynthesis research, this protein was the reaction center from the photosynthetic purple bacterium Rhodopseudomonas viridis. This research earned these three scientists the 1984 Nobel Prize in chemistry. 

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