66 Got an email from a lovely person passing on the Thomson Reuters pick(s). They seem to agree that Grätzel has one coming and I’ve been feeling that way myself. They also have picked Benjamin List for his work using asymmetric catalysts and Barton/Giese/Schuster for electron transfer in DNA.
- Contributions of single molecule spectroscopy: Zare/Bard/Moerner 10-1
- Work in solar cells: Grätzel 11-1
- Computational chemistry: Karp/Goddard 12-1
- Enamine catalysis: List/Lerner 20-1
- Discovery and development of transition metal cross coupling: Suzuki/Heck/Sonogashira Buchwald 30-1
- Development of advanced materials: Matyjaszewski /Gray/Inokuchi 50-1
- Work on molecular Chaperones: Hartl/Horwich: 60-1
- Electron transfer in DNA: Barton/Giese/Schuster 100-1
- Electron transfer process in proteins: Gray 145-1
- Contributions to bioinorganic chemistry: Solomon/Gray/Holm 200-1
- Epigenetics: Cedar/Razin: 350-1
- Molecular Machines: Stoddart/Feringa/Leigh: 400-1
- Enzyme mimics, Breslow: 1000-1
UPDATED: 09.13.09
UPDATED: 09.15.09 — Replaced Whitesides with Matyjaszewski and lowered odds, added Hartl and Horwich for work on Chaperones (on account of this article [though I still don't think bio will win it this year]) and removed Westheimer, on account of him being dead. Enzyme mimics are now a long shot of long shots.
UPDATED: 09.24.09 – Seriously reconsidered Grätzel and read Thompson’s report. Changed the topic of what Zare is going to win his Nobel for, such that it makes sense. Moved Gratzel to number 1 pick.
UPDATED: 09.25.09 – Interesting link sent to me via the Gmail: 10.1007/s11192-009-0035-9. It discusses, in depth, why it is becoming harder to predict who will win the Nobel. Added Lerner w/ List and changed it to the more apt “Enamine catalysis.”
UPDATED: 10.06.09 – Removed Sonogashira (’cause he’s dead) and replaced him with Buchwald (why not?)
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You don’t think Nobels will be compassionately reallocated to professed Muslims?
Your top prediction is erroneous. Zare pioneered laser-induced fluorescence for analysis of chemical reactions (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4153.739), not single-molecule spectroscopy. Of course, he did contribute to single-molecule spectroscopy, too (e.g. using confocal microscopy: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.7973650), but not via the application of lasers.
Well, you would know…
Also, no offense to Prof. Zewail, but the 1999 prize could have been shared with a couple other people using lasers in chemistry, Zare being one of them!
So, should I drop the odds on Professor Zare?
I won’t go that far, but maybe change the reason from “single molecule spectroscopy” to “chemical-reaction analysis”
When should young graduate students and/or hateful postdocs prank their bosses? The butt-crack dawn of October 7 would be a good time.
that’s a good way to get fired.
Anyone you know?
I always wanted to get some use out of the professors’ home numbers when they leave them up on a “in case of emergency call” list.
OK, I guess I can let more ignorance out of the bag…
1) Is electron transfer in DNA important enough or well-resolved enough to get a Nobel?
2) Why would List be the only one for asym. catalysis? His group’s done good work, but I would have figured that there are lots of people (or at least more than one) that should be there if organocatalysis is deserving – MacMillan, for one. Is organocatalysis ubiquitous enough (other than in JACS/ACIEE/OL papers) to be worthy of a Nobel? If org gets it, Pd would seem to be more worthy and likely (with the caveat that someone still has to figure which three people should get the credit). Buchwald/Hartwig should get one before List and MacMillan, IMO.
List should get it, but I would hope Evans would get it before MacMillan or even Hartwig.
List was also chosen by Thompson, for whatever reason, as their likely pick.
A likely chose at some point in the past 500 years would be Evans, but what exactly would he get it for. If you say “contributions to Organic Synthesis” that is the same thing they did with Corey, no? Evans will probably just end up with his Priestly award for lifetime achievement and what not. If he is a nobel contender sometime soon, they should really get the ball rolling on that. That hooker is getting old…Sometimes, looking at the Harvard website it’s amazing that Corey, Evan, Karplus and many others are even still alive.
evans is only 68
I had heard that other males in his family didn’t reach 50 – I think he’s already had cancer, and he had been (earlier) overweight. 68 isn’t that young, anyway (10 years life expectancy, on average?). If you’re going to give it to him, it would be a good idea to get on it soon.
At group meeting one evening my advisor, who has a relatively close relationship with Evans, stated Evans and other members of his family suffer from a genetic disorder that leads to very high cholesterol levels and/or fatty acids. As Hap alluded to, the disorder is often fatal; however, recent advances in medicine have allowed Evans to control the disorder. I expect we will not see him pass anytime soon from natural causes.
Though I hope you are correct, I have seen Prof. Evans speak recently and he did not look good.
All of this speculation about the health of Professor Evans is a reason why they should get rid of the silly only-the-living rule for the Nobels.
Of course, then we’ll have all this retroactive Nobeling to do, so never mind.
organocatalysis is too young to get a nobel, and hasn’t been developed into as broad a range of applications (yet); my bet is that a prize is still at least 10 years away. macmillan must be mentioned at the same time as list though. my understanding of the modern (”ignoring” hajos-parrish etc) development of the field is that list/barbas are responsible for nucleophilic enamine-based reactions, whereas macmillan invented electrophilic, iminium-based reactions (+ SOMO catalysis, which i have heard him credit to his student Teresa Beeson)
in this regard though, how much do people consider thiourea/cinchona alkaloid/chiral DMAP/phosporamidates as organocatalysts… will the award be shared with jacobsen, fu, denmark, deng li, etc?? starting to get as muddy as Pd in terms of number of people involved.
I agree. I don’t see List as being the only one in the field to get it. It it were just List it would have to be for enamine catalysis, and well, he was technically working with Lerner and Barbas at the time. MacMillan would kill himself if list got that shit. I think, in the future, Akiyama or Terada are more likely for a prize in organocatalysis than List. Terada more than Akiyama probably, since Aki is at a small school.
i totally agree that organocatalysis is a too “young” hot topic compares to Pd or Cu cross coupling reactions which are far more developped in industry
While it would be AWESOME to see a chemistry Nobel go to materials instead of biology, I’m not sure DSSCs have come quite far enough for that kind of recognition. Would be cool to see it go to Gratzel, but my personal pick is, as always until someone wins one for it, palladium.
Why isn’t anyone mentioning Langer?
Didn’t he patent the inhaled insulin thing? Was that him?
He has been the #1 guy in integrating polymers with healthcare over the past 25 years (so, he has stuck with his field). He has had his hands in everything, probably including inhaled insulin, although that specifically was a flop. Check out his creds – - he’s the real deal: http://web.mit.edu/langerlab/langer.html He stays off the chemists’ collective radar, I think, because he doesn’t publish very often (anymore), and he’s ChemE…
He would get it for med
Good one. You’re probably right.
Give the physics prize to Hawking and stfu
I have a problem with Matyjaszewski. Don’t get me wrong, everyone and their brother has used ATRP to do SOMETHING interesting (and therefore perhaps Nobel prize worthy…), but damn it — I get tired of seeing the same paper constantly come from his laboratory… That is my rant. I would much prefer to see Whitesides in that category.
True, but one thing Nobel winners have in common is that they picked one thing and stuck to it e.g. HC Brown How many papers did that guy have before he died? How many were actually distinguishable from each other?
Excellent point. I had to do a lit. review on Brown at the beginning of my studies. I remember having about 10 of his papers spread out on my desk, trying to figure out which were the best to list on my slides as the reference for a specific topic…
coughgrubbscough
What would Whitesides get it for? I don’t think he will unless it’s for SAMs. That or, like, soft lithography and µCP. He’s been an innovator in lots of fields but he’s got research ADD like nobody’s business.
Kyle’s right. Winning a Nobel requires two things: either picking a field and innovating it or starting a new one; and sticking with it for a long, long time. The Nobel is a lifetime achievement award for a scientist whose accomplishments can be summarized in a news headline. Whitesides’ certainly couldn’t.
Grätzel has done some mighty fine work but he won’t get it, not for a while at least. I want Richard Heck to win. He’s earned it.
How frustrating must that be? Your field is TOO productive (>3 PIs) to get you a Nobel.
Seriously, though, if the Pd gang is too many people, GIVE THEM 2 NOBELS. (2009: Heck, Suzuki, Stille; 2010: Sonogashira, Negishi, Kumada) Shit is just that useful.
impossible to give Nobel to Sonogashira and Kumada : they ar six feet under
Perhaps it is a tell death grudgematch. Last three Pd chemists standing get a Nobel…
You know, I wonder what palladium chemists look like in Claymation…
Sonogashira is dead, eh? Crap.
The Nobel Committee: enlivening the twilight years between making your name and dying.
I don’t really think Sonogashira would have gotten it anyway. I envisage like a “for achievements in organopalladium chemistry” or something going to Heck, Suzuki, Negishi and/or Trost (apparently you tot. syn. people love your pi-allyl chemistry or something).
I would be shocked beyond belief if DNA charge transfer wins, and that\’s what I do my research on (hence anonymous). The original Barton claims that DNA is a high-speed \”pi-way\” were based on poorly characterized structures and have been overturned (she and Zewail hint at this in some later papers). Basically she inferred extremely fast charge transfer rates from steady-state fluorescence quenching data, which is very sensitive to impurities, aggregation of the DNA molecules, flexibility of the donor/acceptor tethers, etc. The work of Giese and Schuster, along with later studies using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy on well-defined DNA sequences, has shown that DNA can transfer holes relatively quickly and efficiently through a hopping mechanism, but will never be any kind of super-duper-conductor.
In her favor is that the controversy she generated has fueled millions and millions of dollars in research grants, especially for theorists who love DNA as a model system. It\’s a very tricky problem that seems well-defined until you start to think about things like counterion mobility, vibrational dephasing, roles of phonons and polarons, etc. There are at least three books on just the theory of CT through DNA, with several more including experimental results.
Dear Anonymous,
My new spam eater gobbled that up real good and it took forever to re post it. It will likely always eat your comments, but I want you to know that you are loved, and that’s a really good insight, which is why I took the 5 minutes to get it out of deep spam.
Love,
Kyle
If Barton won, I don’t know how Dervan will feel. Unless Geneohm’s technology really works, I will be shocked, too.
P.S. I think Barbas odds of wining in the future is very high but will probably be phage display etc.
The so called “Thomson pick” is more like the list of people who will NOT get Nobel of this year.
No mention of Feher and Yonath?
LOL@ Ron Breslow. Anyway, so these Thomson people list List and Lerner? I mean the original papers had Lerner on them, but wouldn’t it be more correct to say List/Barbas? It’s not List was a schmuck (maybe he was) just chilling at Scripps. He did all of that chemistry kind of solo, just happened to be under the “supervision” of Barbas more or less. Besides, Barbas is more med. chem. anyway, he doesn’t focus solely on enamine catalysis as a major area. What would be really funny is if MacMillan and List were on that ticket together. I think they would both end up killing each other, considering the amount of hate between the two of them.
Too soon for click chemistry?
Also, what about Dupont/Curran winning it for Teflon/Fluorochemistry?
and Djerassi must be getting up there too, no?
LOL@ Carl Djerassi. I think he’s too busy writing letters to the editor to bitch out Barry Trost. Sweden would be lucky to have him. Perhaps he could perform one of his “riveting” plays or do a reading of one of his sci-fi novels.
Birth-control pills are a pretty powerful contribution though -closer to Peace than Chemistry (or maybe Medicine – hee-hee, we can steal one of your prizes now!), but powerful nonetheless. You would have figured if he were to get it for BC, though, it would have happened long ago.
I´d incorporate a couple of names in three or four years:
Contributions to bioinorganic chemistry:
Holm-Pecoraro-PJ Sadler
Advances in molecular magnetism (SIMMs) heading towards quantum computing:
Dante Gateschi-George Christou-Richard Winnpeny-Eugenio Coronado-Euan Brechin (likely the chemist aged under 40 with a higher h-index an a huge impact in his field not seen before)
If the nobel prize were conceded post mortem…Teruaki Mukaiyama for his contibutions to organic chemistry
List and Lerner for enamine catalysis?
Would have to include Barbas.
List has actually never designed an enamine catalyst! I do see’borrowed’ phosphoric acid catalyst designs though.
Funny, poor Barbas developed both the catalytic antibodies that use an enamine mechanism and discovered proline catalysis. Most of the proline reactions just revisit his earlier aldolase antibody work.
There is an interesting remnant of a story concerning the technician who was involved in the early proline work on his website when List was working as his postdoc. Someone should interview this guy Tommy Bui and the other witnesses of the time.
If you read the 97′ JACS communication of Barbas and Danishefsky it’s pretty clear where the small molecule enamine work started.
Gilbert Stork, Zoltan Hajos, and Carlos Barbas
This would get the old boys, stoichiometric enamine chemistry, the early proline work, and modern enamine chemistry in aldolases and organocatalysis. Add on Barbas has developed enamine drugs an enamine vaccine and maybe discovered biological organocatalysis in addition to a few JACS Comms.
Would love to see old man Stork live to see his day.
Sorry, but you really can’t put Barbas up there with out List. I mean, you are saying “biological organocatalysis.” I’m fairly sure that’s a field already, enzyme catalysis, no? And that shit has been around for a long time with a ton of people working on it. The only reason Barbas is in a field concerning enamines is because he was chasing a hot area that had been slowly developing at the end of the 90’s and really being picked up by List, MacMillan, Jacobsen, Yamamoto and others.
lol Read the literature. what kool-aide are you on? Its pretty clear that Barbas started the enamine organocatalysis fire in the mid 90’s(yes before the pure organics) and made the proline/aldol/enzyme connection others missed. List can surely ride along like the grad student who shared the medicine prize today, why not.
Of course the ‘pure’ organics will never accept a biochemists contributions so they choose to ignore even JACS and Science papers if they are outside the realm of ‘pure’ organic. Pretty limited viewpoint and that’s what List is counting on from the organic community.
its all way too early anyway…let’s continue in 2030 when the world melts
I think you are the one drinking the kool-aide. “proline catalyzed direct asymmetric aldol reactions” was published in 2000. At that time, List was neither a grad student nor a post doc for Barbas anymore. He was an assistant professor at Scripps, technically. I think you are ignoring key facts there friend. As far as the “pure” organics and your other bitching, this seems typical for a biochemist. I know you guys feel displaced since you often feel that you aren’t biologists, or chemists, so you have to be grouped into your own “field.” Get over it…
I really don’t think organocatlysis is big enough or validated enough or impactful enough to win a Nobel right now
True, would be a last chance grab for Stork. Don’t think he’ll last another 20
Sorry, but I find it hilarious that people are throwing around List and McMillan’s names. Seriously people, do you really think organocatalysis is currently of the same stature as olefin metathesis or palladium in organic chemistry? I think this is a great example of people jumping on the bandwagon of what everyone considers “cool”. It’s more like a meme I think.
I don’t remember reading or writing that organocatalysis was as developed as metathesis. I do remember Grubbs, Chauvin, and Schrock sharing the prize in 2005 for metathesis development though… As far as palladium chemistry I completely agree with you. I am just unsure of how to narrow down to a single group on that one. Do you want to start with Migita? or do you wanna start with Buchwald and Hartwig? who?
You didn’t say it but that was the point…metathesis in 2005 was much more validated and important than organocatalysis is in 2009. For palladium, I think the split will indeed be complicated. Heck for sure and then probably Suzuki and Stille (unless Still is no more). It would be unfair to Buchwald then but it still wouldn’t be that bad. Of course, if the choice had to be made between Buchwald and Hartwig it would probably have to be Buchwald.
I agree with you to a certain extent. I think organocatalysis, in some regards is close, maybe a few years. As far as the Palladium, I would lean more toward Buchwald. Most people seem to lean more toward Buchwald any way. I think all of the industrial and pharmaceutical applications that the Pd catalyzed amination has had is incredibly nobel worthy. Many of his post-docs get NCI funding, and Buchwald doesn’t do any cancer research, per se, but his compounds are widely used.
bioshit again…buff
Ok, there really just needs to be a biology prize. This is absurd.
Oh fantastic. I always think Physiology (structure)& Medicine (biology) is more appropriate for structural biology (what’s that second word there?) work. But hey.
Full credit to hufsnagel, the only commenter above in the ballpark.