Chemical Forums
General Forums => Generic Discussion => Topic started by: Borek on October 05, 2005, 07:54:27 AM
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http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/2005/index.html
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http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/2005/info.pdf
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/culture/20051005.OBS1189.html - translation is possible!
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/schrock.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20051005-0655-ca-nobelprize-calif..htm
http://www.ilpi.com/organomet/olmetathesis.html
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The president of Caltech, himself a Nobel Laureate (in medicine, I think), referred to metathesis as "esoteric" in his press release about Grubbs.
Gosh, way to be condescending.
Any organic chemist or polymer chemist knows that metathesis has had a huge impact in their fields. How many labs out there exist solely to work on new variations of metathesis? It's ridiculous!
My point: just because something doesn't relate directly to biology or medicine doesn't mean that it is "esoteric" or useless.
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Grubbs is a real nice guy, I've met him several times. That has to be one of the fastest Nobel Prizes given to a new invention. Only around 10 years or so after his blockbuster catalyst.
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Geeeez, I'm laughing so hard, because idiots in polish public television said on the news that this is possible due to the usage of molybdenium-praseodymium catalysators.. I checked out one of the links, I'm looking at the structure - ok, there's the molybdenium atom, but where is that praseodymium.. ok.. there it is.. iPr - but that stands for an isopropyl group, not praseodymium..
and they said that on the news.. ::)
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A whole lot of metals have been used for metathesis. Ruthenium and Molybdenum seem to be the best in terms of selectivity though. Some Tungsten ones are useful as well.
I have to agree with Mitch that Grubbs is a heck of a nice guy. Did you know that the second generation catalyst was made by an undergrad student? I just found that out last week. Amazing. Grubbs has actually been working on metathesis for a long time, definitely more than ten years, but the Ru catalyst (the Grubbs first generation catalyst) isn't that old. The second gen. catalyst is what really made metathesis insanely useful in organic chemistry. It just fixed all the problems with the other metathesis catalysts. There is also a lot to be said for the way that Grubbs packaged the chemistry. There is a great full paper in JACS about selective cross-metathesis that really lays out how to use to catalyst for what you want. He also did some really interesting work on the fate of the Ru catalyst and what the decomposition pathways are. Great chemistry all around!
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It was also an undergrad that found out Mercury was a superconductor at low temperatures. Of course the professors just swoop in and get the glory and Nobels apparently. ;)
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Yeah, that's for sure. Only very rarely is there a grad. student that gets recognized for their work, much less an undergrad.
A couple of notable exceptions: Stork-Danheiser chemistry (Danheiser was an undergrad at the time), the Diels-Alder reaction (Alder was a graduate student, he actually did get the Nobel prize though), also there was an undergrad student who pointed out to Watson and Crick that they were trying to build models with the wrong tautomers of the base pairs so the hydrogen bonds in DNA didn't make sense. The second name on all of the name reactions that are named for E.J. Corey are the names of the students that worked on them, but I think that is more important to keep all the "Corey reagents" straight.
Actually, in the Grubbs group they refer to the different metathesis catalysts by the name of the person that first made the catalyst. So whereas the rest of the community would call it the "second generation Grubbs catalyst," at a Grubbs group meeting they would call is "<student>'s catalyst." (Sorry I don't know the student's name.) It probably makes it a lot easier to keep track since there are so many slight variants of the Grubbs catalyst motif.
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Bragg (the younger) got Nobel prize for his work did as a student. This is about 0.3 % of Nobel prize winners. Mitch, you have still run a chance.
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Bragg of Bragg's Law fame?
Crystallography is cool.
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Bragg of Bragg's Law fame?
Exactly this Bragg.
He was a student of physics, but during summer vacations he worked as volunteer in his father lab, and just for this work father and son got the prize.
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Bragg of Bragg's Law fame?
A good old Adelaide boy from South Australia!
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I didn't know the Bragg family is Australian
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Well Bragg (the younger) was born in Adelaide, Australia while his father worked at the University of Adelaide, he then studied at Adelaide Uni before the family moved (to England I think).
Adelaide Uni has some physics laboratory buildings named after the Braggs.
Another famous Adelaide boy was Howard Florey (of penicillin fame)
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also has a lecture theatre named after bragg as well, though the lec is a bit dilapitated. incidentally florey has a lecture theartre at adelaide as well
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three cheers for organometallic chemistry!
Its been a while since this field made an appearance in the Nobel Prizes.
I've been considering applying to Schrock's Group, has anyone ever met the guy?
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Schrock gave a lecture at my school about 6 months ago. I didn't get to meet him personally though. I'm definitely more of an organic chemist that uses organometallic chemistry than an organometallic chemist that finds organic applications, so I wasn't all that interested in the stuff that he talked about (which was not metathesis). He is working on some very difficult, but important problems in chemistry, and has made a lot of progress.
I don't know how he would be to work for....