What, God didn’t send you the memo? The Nobel in Chemistry is going to go in perpetuity to people who spend their whole day never wasting thought one on any entity less than 50 kDa. Because you and me and our tiny little discrete, well-characterized small molecules are fucking unimportant. You should have gotten your doctorate in some discipline where the most aggressive solvent you work with is a pH 5 buffer, then founded some start up whose name includes -gene or Nova- or -viva- or some shit and fly around to conferences doing your Hal Holbrook and pumping the company until some desperate idiot CEO from one of the dinosaurs – Pfizer, Merck, etc. – pays way too much to buy you out.

Wait. I didn’t forward that memo to you. Sorry.

The main problem I have with this is the fact that biologists get to double dip in the opportunities in getting the award. I understand they don’t have their own category, but it shouldn’t mean they get a chance at both the chemistry prize and the medicine prize. I know the technique they used to get the structure is purely chemical, but for shits sake, it has made more of an impact in the medicine world. I would have loved to see the prize awarded to Zare, mainly for the reason that his contributions have made more of an impact in our world. Then again, who am I to say who gets the prize.

A list of the people on the Nobel Committee for Chemistry (people to blame!):

Gunnar von Heijne (Chairman)
Professor of Theoretical Chemistry

Astrid Gräslund (Secretary)
Professor of Biophysics

Måns Ehrenberg (Member)
Professor of Molecular Biology

Sven Lidin (Member)
Professor of Inorganic Chemistry

Lars Thelander (Member)
Professor of Physiological Chemistry

Håkan Wennerström (Member)
Professor of Theoretical Physical Chemistry

I looked up Lidin – as the only one likely to be a synthetic chemist… solid phase crap.

Ha! Remember when we were getting pissy about the possibility of List getting it? “Too early” etc….at least that dude is a fucking chemist!

I read the annoucement online this morning and came right over here because I knew you were going to say that.

I congratulate the winners, but I similarly hope this doesn’t signal a continuing drift away from pure chemistry.

I think it would be appropriate if they gave the Nobel Prize in Medicine to some of the Pd-coupling guys for their contributions to drug discovery. I think it makes more sense than biofuckers getting the Chemistry prize.

Diversity Nobel Prize/Chemistry.

Take the crystal structure of NaCl, give it 5 Mrad of Co-60, take the crystal structure of NaCl with F-centers. Fourier difference map, then wait for Sweden to call. Silly, you say? It was done by a patriarchally-oppressed Muslim woman in a cave she dug under her slit latrine in Dearborn, MI. It used a van de Graaf generator whose belt was woven of her own pubic hair. The detector was a 5000×5000 compact grid of hair lice. Calculations were performed in mud between the births of her nine children. Financed by her own flesh sold as shawarma. The radiation source was donated by Iran but diverted to science!

That should be good for a sweep of Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Economics, and Peace. If it cured her HIV, add Medicine.

My question to you: explain why studying the mechanism of peptide synthesis by the ribosome is not chemistry? Just because the ribosome is a biological system does not mean that they are not also studying chemistry.

If the award had gone for the discovery of ribosomes, I would agree that them winning the chemistry prize was not appropriate (in this respect, the last year’s prize for the discovery of GFP is less appropriate for the chemistry prize than this award). However, they performed numerous biochemical and structural studies to look at mechanistic issues and understand how the ribosome works. To me, chemistry is the study of the atomic and molecular structure of mater and how these structures influence a molecules properties. In this respect, Ramakrishnan, Steitz, and Yonath’s work fits right into the heart of what chemists do.

(disclaimer: I used to do structural biology, so I have my biases)

Come on gentlemen, remember that Feynman´s famous quote which can be used anytime to describe our endeavours in chemistry…”Likewise sex, perhaps chemistry has useful applications, however that is not why we do it…”

What a gathering must be in 1965 when Feynnman got the prize in physics and Woodward in chemistry…nothing to do with nowadays

Please explain how this year’s chemistry Nobel prize was not awarded for chemistry. The fact that Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath study a biological system does not preclude their work from begin classified as chemistry. Had the prize been awarded for the discovery of ribosomes, I would agree that the chemistry prize would not be appropriate. However, this year’s chemistry laureates did not discover the ribosome: they performed a series of very good biochemical and structural studies to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of peptide synthesis by a catalyst that is a very complicated supramolecular assembly.

To me, chemistry is the study of atomic and molecular structure and understanding how these structures affect the properties of molecules and molecular assemblies. In this respect, the work of Ramakrishnan, Steitz and Yonath falls right into the heart of what chemists do.

(disclaimer: I used to do structural biology, so I am biased in this regard. I also tried submitting this earlier but it didn’t go through so I am trying again. If this double posts, I apologize)

eh, it’s chemistry. Just on a really big molecule.

Kyle – your words mirror my sentiments – my entire department’s sentiments – exactly. Maybe if we take the ribosome and throw some Pd at it, synthesis might get some recognition.

It seems to me that as long as the selection and award mechanisms are shrouded in secrecy there will never be anyone to hold to account. The majority of the reactions to this announcement are dismay and frustration. But even so, nothing will change – at least not until someone with a proverbially bigger dick (hell, even a literally bigger one might do) complains about this.

When will the Nobel Committe understand that crystalization is so trivial that every chemist does that regularly and biologists think it as great a scientific effort only because of their lack of knowledge in chemistry (as is the case with the committe too)?

Give it up fellas. This is the century of biology so expect more biological researchers to win every kind of prize including the Nobel Prize in chemistry. However it will also be the century of nanotechnology so I think we can hope for some “pure” chemistry Nobels too. But don’t get upset if some of them go to engineers.

And by the way this is chemistry. Chemists have determined the structures of natural products using spectroscopic and x-ray methods for decades and nobody doubted that it was chemistry. This is the same except for a bigger molecule with great relevance to biology. It pretty squarely falls under the title of “molecular structure determination”

1) Grow single crystals of geometrically left- and right-handed quartz, space groups P3(2)21 and P3(1)21 respectively. Optical rotation is reversed handedness (by defintion of measurement, not by sense of rotation).
2) Machine, gild, then mount in an Eotvos balance,

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/erotor1.jpg

3) Run that puppy for the usual 90 days.
4) If the net output sums to zero, Uncle Al will apologize.
5) If the net output does not sum to zero, rewrite physics. Uncle Al will use his dynamite money to synthesize a room temp supercon or something… before the EPA Department of Energy, and Homeland Severity shut him down for thinking.

I think an overhaul of the prize might be in order. Open up a new category for biology/molecular biology/biochemistry etc, because when the prize was first envisioned the field didn’t even exist. If people keep getting pissed off at the selection of winners the prize will lose its meaning. Also, allow more than three people to share the prize.

uncle al is on FIRE!

This one I TOTALLY agree with, and I work in synthetic inorganic/organometallic chemistry. Kyle, go get educated about the recipients contributions to using CCD detectors (physics, 2009), fine-focused xray experiments, low-T xray experiments, and “the phase problem”. The first two are stock parts of your typical Bruker platform small-molecule diffractometer (e.g.). Also, I can’t imagine trying to get a phase soln w/ protein data and less computing power than my cell phone (MUCHHHH less….).

I advocate STRONGLY for a ‘Biological prize in honor of Nobel’ (a la econ) to be established. In 1895 biology was literally butterfly collecting and that’s just not where science is these days. As long as there isn’t one we’ll see the bio achievements pick off chem and med Nobel’s here and there, which divides the community and generally annoys the “pure” practitioners of the art.

I’d love to see a biology nobel. However, that would go to population biologists, systems biologists, evolutionary biologists, etc. Crystallography is chemistry, and crystallographers are chemists, and they’d continue to receive Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. Without crystal structures of complicated protein assemblies at sufficient resolution to decipher orientation and mechanism, many total synthesis targets wouldn’t be interesting. Granted, I’d have voted for Heck or Jack Roberts or Bard before ribosomes, but it’s still hard to argue against ribosome structure on the grounds of relevance, importance, and pure elegance.

I gave Rodger Kornberg much respect when he solved the crystal structure of a gold nanoparticle + ligands soon after his 2006 Nobel. I expect something equivalent from these three.

I had the fortune of sitting in on Steitz talk about some of his work last year. I recall some rather sexy animations of DNA replication that kept me from completely losing consciousness. I couldn’t agree more that a Nobel in Biology would be a great idea, though – I’m sure biologists are equally pissed that they don’t have their own prize as we are pissed that they’re constantly grabbing gongs in Chemistry.

Fortunately, this year’s Ig Nobel in Chemistry seems to have been given to actual chemists, so there’s that much to be thankful for…

It may be work but crystallography of a compound of interest isn’t reinventing the wheel. If the Total Synth groups could win based on simply synthesizing a big target without developing new methods and functionality, it would be comparable.

A Nobel for each interesting enzyme solved is not revolutionary, and it’s particularly frustrating that important discoveries in every sub-field of chemistry are going unrewarded while this focus continues.

I don’t see what the problem is here. Surface chemistry won in 2007, metathesis won in 2005; it’s not like the last “pure” chemistry Nobel was awarded 50 years ago. Have some patience. One of your predictions will probably win a year or two.