Posts from an inorganic chemistry enthusiast!
"Fritz Haber is often this scapegoat...Most of us are also teachers. We have to do better than the usual, traditional technical presentation of the ammonia synthesis, invoking it as a fine illustration of Le Chatelier's Principle. We have to talk also about Haber, the historical figure and the person. His choices and agony are a part of us."
"researchers do not act independently but rather as communities of scholars who constantly check and approve one another's work."
"[Paul Samuelson] Knowledge advances, funeral by funeral."
"Science is about what is, not what ought to be."
"Before I was ten, I understood that in the United States foreigners are not foreign."
"Nationalism has little to contribute today except further suffering."
"Ignore teasing."
"...before the 1880s, science played almost no role in the advances of technology...Chemistry was the first science to undergo a merger with technology, and the first technology affected was dyemaking."
"He [Heisenberg] complained that physics had ceased to develop; there was hardly anything interesting left to do."
"Bohr:Where we find a paradox, we find something of real interest."
"Bohr said that to be properly understood, one should not lecture in his native tongue."
"The lesson is that the correct theory applied to the wrong data is better than no theory applied to correct measurements."
"[Bohr] Opennes is the basic condition necessary for science."
" Johnny [von Neumann] was the Euclid of quantum mechanics."
"The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate...Hydrogen bombs will not produce themselves."
"Science historically had moved forward because of openness."
"I find the idea of civil disobedience in a democracy wrong."
"Fermi and I both lacked formal religious beliefs"
"I believe that if a mentally superhuman race ever develops, its members will resemble Johnny von Neumann."
"I had begun teaching Paul[his son] relativity theory when he was five or six...he understood the theory of relativity by the time he was twelve."
[about Plato's Republic]" I was shocked that a book advocating a centralized government administered from above, much on the lines of totalitarianism, was so highly recommended to young people."
"I note that the year 2000 is not the first year of the third millennium, no matter what the arithmetically-challenged of this world may like to think."
"At the beginning of the first millennium (i.e., six days after the birthday arbitrarily assumed for Jesus"http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2000/DT/B001668N#!divAbstract
"I have a healthy disregard for anybody and everybody who has not made advances in the field in which they are pontificating."
"Carbon monoxide dehydrogenases (CODHs) use CO as their sole source of carbon and energy and are found in both aerobic and anaerobic carboxidotrophic bacteria. Reversible transformation of CO to CO2 is catalyzed by a bimetallic [Mo–(μ2-S)–Cu] system in aerobic and by a highly asymmetric [Ni–Fe–S] cluster in anaerobic CODH active sites. The CODH activity in the microorganisms effects the removal of almost 108 tons of CO annually from the lower atmosphere and earth and thus help to maintain a sub-toxic concentration of CO. Despite an appreciable amount of work, the mechanism of CODH activity is not clearly understood yet. Moreover, biomimetic chemistry directed towards the active sites of CODHs faces several synthetic challenges. The synthetic problems associated with the modeling chemistry and strategies adopted to overcome those problems are discussed along with their limitations. A critical analysis of the exciting results delineating the present status of CODH modeling chemistry and its future prospects are presented."
"Neurodegenerative diseases are capturing the world's attention as being the next set of diseases we must tackle collectively. Not only are the patients experiencing gradual cognitive and physical decline in most cases, but these diseases are fatal with no prevention currently available. As these diseases are progressive, providing care and symptom treatment for the ageing population is becoming both a medical and a financial challenge. This review discusses how Werner coordination chemistry plays a role in three diseases – those of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and prions. Metal ions are considered to be involved in these diseases in part via their propensity to cause toxic aggregation of proteins. First, the coordination of metal ions, with emphasis on copper(II), to metalloproteins that are hallmarks of these diseases – amyloid β, α-synuclein, and prion, respectively – will be discussed. We will present the current understanding of the metal coordination environments created by the amino acids of these proteins, as well as metal binding affinity. Second, a diverse set of examples of rationally designed metal chelators to outcompete this deleterious binding will be examined based on coordination mode and affinity toward bio-relevant metal ions. Overall, this review will give a general overview of protein and metal chelator coordination environments in neurodegenerative diseases. "
"I ride, I ride the winds that bring the rain
A creature of love and I can't be tamed"
The sky is so clear tonight;
It's so calm before the storm.
All the stars shine so bright
Like the world has been reborn.
I'm think I'm in a dream tonight.
It's still calm before the storm.
But I dream of rising light
A sign it's time to be reborn.
It's still calm before the storm.
Occasionally, one man will play such a central and monopolistic role in a particular field of science that his name virtually becomes synonymous with that field. Alfred Werner, the undisputed founder of coordination chemistry, is just a man.
"...the metal atoms must posses the property of binding six such residues."
"The Blomstrand-Jorgensen view of metal-ammonia salts can in no way explain this peculiar transition of basic metal-ammonia radicals to similar complexes acting as acids, and therefore this theory seems to me to be untenable."
"...all water molecules, and all acid residues are bound directly to the metal atom, since otherwise the relationships of these compounds to one another cannot be explained."
" I must search around for a new, larger subject...for the investigation of the metal-ammines has succeeded to such an extent that I can no longer hope for really new results."
"The proof that molecules of optically active compounds do not absolutely have to contain carbon is of importance because with such a proof the difference still existing between carbon compounds and purely inorganic compounds disappears.... proof is that carbon-free inorganic compounds can also exist as mirror image isomers. "
Therefore I have occupied myself for quite some time with proving this and have now reached the goal
"What do you think is the proper formulation for H2PtCl6? Why do you think the compound is commonly called chloroplatinic acid?"
"Despite publishing a couple of good papers on hydrogenase, I never obtained funding for these studies, so I eventually dropped the project."
"Meanwhile it became increasingly difficult to entice new graduate students to work on ACS/CODH, as attitudes had shifted. Why study an enzyme that does not cause or cure any disease, they asked? Responding that the chemistry was interesting simply wasn't enough."
“Life really begins when you have discovered that you can do anything you want.”"Much the same thing happens when you take a person and put him in a job which he does not like. He gets irritable in his groove. His duties soon become a monotonous routine that slowly dulls his senses.""Whether you are flying the Atlantic or selling sausages or building a skyscraper or driving a truck, your greatest power comes from the fact that you want tremendously to do that very thing, and do it well.""The greatest satisfaction you can obtain from life is your pleasure in producing, in your own individual way, something of value to your fellowmen. That is creative living!""The next time you feel that you ‘haven’t the time’ to do what you really want to do, it may be worth-while for you to remember that you have as much time as anyone else — twenty-four hours a day. How you spend that twenty-four hours is really up to you."
"Finally, a word of encouragement to those who are frightened by mathematics. The mathematics involved in actually applying, as opposed to deriving, group theoretical formulae is quite trivial. It involves little more than adding and multiplying."
"Despite the fact that there seems to be a growing desire among chemists at large to acquire this knowledge, it is still true that only a very few, other than professional theoreticians, have done so...no book available which is not likely to strike some terror into the hearts of all but those with an innate love of apparently esoteric theory."
—Neurosurgeon and former NASA researcher Mark Wilson, speaking about the future of emergency medicine on the Imagine the Future of Medicine blog (March 28)Do difficult research—it’s where the true answers lie. When doing research, don’t look where everyone else is. You’ll just confirm their findings. Look along the untrodden path going the wrong way—that’s where the unimaginable, disruptive, game-changing discoveries are.
