Prize ponderings

There have been some particularly interesting and worthwhile points made on the blogosphere over the last two days in the wake of the Nobel announcements.

1.) The success of small/investigator-driven/table-top science.  Actually, this applies to more than just the Chemistry Prize - see here for some comments regarding this year's Physics Prize. 

2.) Are we doing ourselves a disservice by discussing and debating the Nobel ad infinitum?  Is trying to find one to three people to recognize for a certain (set of) accomplishments really the best option?  How much of this is a holdover from how science used to be conducted pre-1900?  I happen to especially like Paul's Chemical Hall of Fame idea, and am willing to participate.  (I may want to nominate a physicist or two, though.*)

3.) Chemjobber brings up the interesting point as to whether the "mix" of chemistry that gets highlighted due to the Prize announcements is the one the community wants to present to the public. 

4.) There seems to be a sense that we need to circle the wagons a bit before the central science withers away.  I can't entirely disagree with this one.  I've been told multiple times that some of the questions I've stumbled over while doing biological chemistry regarding underlying questions of (mostly) physical and inorganic chemistry aren't really fundable, at least relative to the biological question with which I'm engaged.  You can only try and spin questions into applications for so long and so far before it gets tedious.


5.) I would read this post over at Everyday Scientist if you haven't already.  I'm in the same sort of boat as a bio/physical chemist.  I look at the Physiology/Medicine Prize and see work like in vitro fertilization and the H. pylori work recognized, and vast amounts of cell biology and systems physiology in their ranks (immunology, olfaction, neurobiology, and so on).  I view biochemistry as something which is securely rooted within the realm of chemistry.  Of course, this makes me wonder - while the issue of communicating chemistry to the public has been a discussion topic in various contexts over the years, maybe we also need to open up the lines of communications between chemists.  I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing this right at the moment, but I am definitely open to ideas.  

Of course, perhaps this is all just colored by my spectroscopic tendencies - if I can fit it into a coil,  cuvette, or beamline, consider my interest piqued.  Biological, chemical, geological, material, or physical. 

As always, the comment section is open. 

*: Erwin Hahn and Albert Overhauser.  Spin echoes and the Overhauser effect.  You know you want to agree with me! Read more!

A perhaps idiosyncratic view.

So, as it turned out, I called this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry.  While I am now curious if I have any Elven ancestry (Elrond had that gift of foresight, right?), I feel I should note the following for those feeling that biochemistry isn't really chemistry.

I like biological chemistry since, in my view, it allows me to explore so many areas of chemistry.  I've synthesized isotopically enriched small molecules, I've purified proteins, I've been able to work with multiple spectroscopic and physical measurement methods in detail, I've examined paramagnetic inorganic solids with both success and failure, I've spectroscopically dissected multicomponent organic solids, I've had to explore certain types of self-assembling systems, I've cranked through theoretical treatments of metalloenzyme catalysis as well as polymer chemistry to make sense of my data over the years.....it's been a good time.

Extending from that, I like chemistry since it is perfectly situated to go hopping over boundaries.  I don't see why I shouldn't be able to figure out signal transduction pathways just because I'm a chemist.  I don't see why I should humbly hand over fundamental questions about the theoretical basis for spectroscopic methods to the physicists.   

Although right now biochemistry is giving me a headache.  Speaking of which, back to it.....

P.S. - A hearty congratulations to both Serge Haroche & David Wineland as well as, of course, Robert Lefkowitz & Brian Kobilka! Read more!

Black boxes and rigor.

There was a thought-provoking post over at the Curious Wavefunction regarding a Nature op/ed piece on the increasing "black boxification" of modern biological research.  While it is both concerning and makes for an easy bit of mockery, I have to sometimes wonder where one can draw a line.  For example, it's been fairly typical (in my experience) for some specific physical/spectroscopic method to be introduced in a manner consistent with one's expected minimum physical chemistry background.  It's not uncommon for there to be a step or two which is essentially "and we take this result from classical mechanics/electrodynamics" or "this is actually a result of a certain mathematical theorem/relation" in such an introduction.   Some might claim that there's a huge difference between not knowing a technique relies upon a particular mechanism versus (for example) not having worked out a laborious series expansion for a particular term that yields the desired form in that case.  But I would view it as a caution - what happens if you stumble across a case where, in fact, you need to go back and rederive the expression for a term since some parameter or limiting case has changed?  Naturally, you find that if you end up relying upon that method in your research to any significant extent, you are going to dig in deeper.  You will figure out what the limiting cases are, and where any approximations are likely to break down. 

Of course, here I'm reminded that there is a difference between being able to contend with the formalisms of an argument and being able to develop a more physically rooted intuition for said argument.  I suspect many of us have encountered the "it's not rigorous enough" student somewhere along the line - they're the ones who find the experimental nature of scientific research a bit troubling and are worried that we're not careful enough with our mathematics.  We don't want to go in that direction either, of course.  Well, those of us who are scientists and not just frustrated mathematicians, at least.  I'd like to think that there can be a fruitful synergy between the two - when one is able to invoke physical intuition is a good time to develop one's mathematical skills and understanding, and then later on apply that mathematical expertise to a new problem where intuition is lacking at the start. 

I have more stuff to blather about, as it distracts me from extremely unfortunate technical difficulties in my own research.  Stay tuned. Read more!

Something to read.....

Check it out -  a recent article by Nobel laureate Steve Weinberg on the problems facing big science.  It might be noted that the article is very US-oriented, which is only fair as Prof. Weinberg is here in the US.  Still, something that we all should read.

Try to think of the major scientific efforts that have been started or completed in the last 10 years here in the US.  OK, there is that entire NSLS-II project presently going on at Brookhaven which is supposed to run not quite a full $1 billion dollars.  OK, there was also the LCLS at SLAC (the free electron laser which came online a few years ago).  Well, just so no one accuses me of a totally horrible memory, the SNS at Oak Ridge was just shy of $1.4 billion and started up a couple of years back (and they're still building the full complement of instruments to go with the source). 

Hmm.  Maybe we're not neglecting "big science" after all.   If anyone has thoughts as to how to resolve this conundrum, they would be welcomed! Read more!

Cackling in Glee.

I actually can't muster up any of my lazy man's wit for this year's chemistry Prize - is it physics? Physical chemistry? Materials science? Just sublimely wonderful and scoffs at the narrow cognitive categories that spring up on occasion. It also emphasizes that as chemists, we have fellow travelers in numerous allied pursuits - remember, if we want to continue blaring the "we are the central science" mantra, we have to recognize chemistry of all sorts whatever its ostensible classification.

The comments at ChemBark brought up two questions in my mind -

(1) - what do we consider chemistry?

and

(2) - why did it seemingly not catch anyone's attention as a candidate for the Chemistry Prize?

I've mentioned - in the vein of Roald Hoffmann - that chemistry stands on the pillars of structure, reactivity, and synthesis. Anything that causes us to reevaluate our understanding of even one of those pillars is noteworthy, as quasicrystals surely did in terms of understanding structure. That they can also occur naturally would indicate that our understanding of geochemistry can stand some fleshing out.

Now, if you had asked me about quasicrystals yesterday, I'd have thought that they'd be a Physics Prize one of these years, given that most of what I had heard about them was through physics seminars I'd attended over the years. But it used to be that the gap between physics and chemistry was far smaller - Rutherford (he of the physics vs. stamp collecting joke) picked up his Nobel in Chemistry way back when, and van der Waals was a Physics laureate. This year's Prize is a nice throwback in that regard. I think there might also be something to the comments on ChemBark that solid state chemistry is something of an underexposed topic in undergraduate curricula here in the US, and many of us just don't have that proper background in the field (which is certainly my case - most of what I know is because I stumbled into having learn something about the field in grad school). There might also be an echo chamber effect going on in the chemistry blogosphere. ;)

Now to start preparing for next year's betting pool! Read more!