nobel-laureates-in-chemistry

"The culture was foreign, the language was difficult, but my hopes were high."

"Arriving in the States, I had the feeling of being thrown into an ocean. The ocean was full of knowledge, culture and opportunities, and the choice was clear: I could either learn to swim or sink."

"There's a time to soar like an eagle and a time to burrow like a worm. It takes a pretty sharp cookie to know when to shed the feathers and (long pause) to begin munching the humus! (characteristic Onsager giggle)."

"In 1944, E. Onsager produced, quite unexpectedly, an exact evaluation of the partition function of the model in two dimensions. It was a real tour de force. I had studied his paper in Chicago in the spring of 1947, but did not understand the method, which was very, very complicated, with many algebraic somersaults... I was thus led to a long calculation, the longest in my career. Full of local, tactical tricks, the calculation proceeded by twists and turns. There were many obstructions. But always, after a few days, a new trick was somehow found that pointed to a new path... after about six months of work off and on, all the pieces suddenly fitted together, producing miraculous cancellations, and I was staring at the amazingly simple final result[, the spontaneous magnetization of the ising model.]"

"On a new derivation of Birkhoff's strong ergodic hypothesis he once remarked in exasperation: "To be any more immaculate they will have to begin sterilizing the paper as well as the theorem !""

"... a reluctance to publish anything except fully-polished work, combined with the habit of dropping valuable hints couched in gnomic terms. The obscurity of his utterances is not due to a desire to mislead; rather it is a result of an inability to appreciate the limitations of his hearers. To those who have been able to appreciate what he tries to say, he has been a source of deep stimulation."

"Pauli judging the World War II period in physics wrote in a letter to Casimir: “Nothing much of interest has happened except for Onsager’s exact solution of the Two-Dimensional Ising Model.”"

"... he gave a seminar in Oxford about his ideas on liquid helium, but on this occasion even the theorists were baffled. Onsager's final comment in reply to a question was: "The results are not bad when you consider the enormity of the swindle which I have perpetrated!""

"They made the mistake there of assigning Onsager to the basic Chemistry I, II course. He just couldn't think at the level of a freshman. Frankly, he was fired. I won't say he was the world's worst lecturer, but he was certainly in contention. He was difficult to understand anyway, but he also had the habit of lecturing when his back was to the students and he was writing on the blackboard. To compound matters, he was a big man, and students had to peer round him just to try and see what was being written."

"... when asked by Longworth how he would explain the electrophoretic effect in "physical terms," he picked up Longsworth, chair and all, and carried him across the room."

"Onsager regarded chess, so he said, as too much like real problem-solving to spend much time on it. When he wanted to unwind from his work he would play solitaire, and bridge was a good relaxation in company."

"There are a lot of folks, some quite talented, who arm themselves with methods and then go hunting for vulnerable problems; but to accept a problem on its own terms and then forge your own weapon--now that's real class!"

"He had been warned that non-theoreticians would be present and that he should phrase his talk in not too technical language. He plunged, nevertheless, into the mathematics of spinor algebras. After about twenty minutes, one of the many experimentalists in the audience had the courage to ask him what a spinor was. Onsager replied, thoughtfully: "A spinor--no, a set of spinors--is a set of matrices isomorphic to the orthogonal group." With that he gave the famous Onsager grin, twinkled his Nordic blue eyes at the bewildered faces around him, and continued the lecture as if nothing had happened."

"In the days of Kepler and Galileo, it was fashionable to announce a new scientific result through the circulation of a cryptogram which gave its author priority and his colleagues headaches. Onsager is one of the few moderns who operates in this tradition."

"One day Onsager told him he had decided to try an experiment on the separation of isotopes by thermal diffussion. "Fine," said Kraus, and was doubly pleased when Lars told him that the only equipment he would need was a long tube. But his encouragement was quickly withdrawn when Onsager explained that the tube must be made of platinum and would have to stretch from the basement to the third floor of the chemistry building. Kraus never pestered him again about doing an experiment, which "was too bad," writes Julian Gibbs, "because no one succeeded in conducting this experiment until more than a decade later, when it was needed as part of the Manhattan Project for the atomic bomb.""

"Of the electroencephalogram he once remarked: "It is like trying to discover how the telephone system works by measuring the fluctuations in the electric power used by the telephone company.""

"... it is obvious that creativity gives no merit in the absence of adequate basic knowledge. Accurate and undistorted knowledge is most important. It will be disastrous if one’s mind is preoccupied with incorrect or distorted preconceptions. The fundamental laws of science and chemistry are absolute and fully trustable. However, various theories, rules and hypotheses made on experiential bases are not laws; these should be trusted only with reservations, especially when studying an unusual phenomenon like bioluminescence."

"I think almost all people would think, if I have no common sense or common knowledge in such field, so that is completely disadvantage, but if someone wants to develop some completely new thing, if we are trying to deduce something from such common knowledge, that we will be just trying to develop some step but we have to jump up, so sometime, such kind of common knowledge will be an obstacle, because at that time, most of the chemists thought that it is completely impossible to ionise such big molecule like protein but at that time, at least, I was not a specialist so I can do anything."

"Probably up to university student, I was a completely shy guy and if I, for example, even in Japan, I had to give some talk in front of, for example 100 people, I would be completely upset and I couldn’t say anything, just ahh. But fortunately, my colleague at that time tried to teach me how to cope with such stress, so at first just try to say something in front of the colleagues and I did and so next step is to say something in front of my employees in my company, so next step is try to give a talk to the people in the conference. So, step by step I learn how to do in front of bigger and bigger number of people, so now I’m here."

"[...] knowledge is our greatest wealth and the love of others the most beautiful human value."

"Today, our developed nations live in opulence, excess and waste, with the consequences that our environment is degrading and the climate is wreaked."

"To control global warming, only one solution: stop burning fossil fuels."

"Reasonably, all these [fossil fuel] investments are financial dead-ends or ecological disasters."

"Keep stupid, keep crazy. Knowledge begins with wonder. Success as a scientist is based on keen curiosity. If one wants to enjoy academic life, I would recommend him or her to be different."

"Molecules that differ from each other by rotation about single bonds are called conformational isomers or conformers. Derek H. R. Barton (…) showed that the chemical and physical properties of complicated molecules can be interpreted in terms of their specific or preferred rotational arrangements and that a knowledge of the conformations of molecules is crucial to understanding the stereochemical basis of many reaction."

"I do not believe that the present flowering of science is due in the least to a real appreciation of the beauty and intellectual discipline of the subject. It is due simply to the fact that power, wealth and prestige can only be obtained by the correct application of science."

"The natural sciences are sometimes said to have no concern with values, nor to seek morality and goodness, and therefore belong to an inferior order of things. Counter-claims are made that they are the only living and dynamic studies... Both contentions are wrong. Language, Literature and Philosophy express, reflect and contemplate the world. But it is a world in which men will never be content to stay at rest, and so these disciplines cannot be cut off from the great searching into the nature of things without being deprived of life-blood."

"Chemists in the late 1800s knew that cyclic molecules existed, but the limitations on ring size were unclear. Although numerous compounds containing five-membered and six-membered rings were known, smaller and larger ring sizes had not been prepared, despite many efforts. A theoretical interpretation of this observation was proposed in 1885 by Adolf von Baeyer, who suggested that small and large rings might be unstable due to angle strain. … The data … show that Baeyer’s theory is only partially correct. Cyclopropane and cyclobutane are indeed strained, just as predicted, but cyclopentane is more strained than predicted, and cyclohexane is strain-free. Cycloalkanes of intermediate size have only modest strain, and rings of 14 carbons or more are strain-free. Why is Baeyer’s theory wrong? Baeyer’s theory is wrong for the simple reason that he assumed all cycloalkanes to be flat."

"In that year [1874], Jacobus van’t Hoff and Joseph Le Bel added a third dimension to our ideas about organic compounds when they proposed that the four bonds of carbon are not oriented randomly but have specific spatial directions. Van’t Hoff went even further and suggested that the four atoms to which carbon is bonded sit at the corners of a regular tetrahedron, with carbon in the center."

"A famous name has this peculiarity that it becomes gradually smaller especially in natural sciences where each succeeding discovery invariably overshadows what precedes."

"It is sometimes easier to circumvent prevailing difficulties [in science] rather than to attack them."

"Whereas the chemico-chemists always find in industry a beautiful field of gold-laden soil, the physico-chemists stand somewhat farther off, especially those who seek only the greatest dilution, for in general there is little to make with watery solutions."

"When a mixture of 1,3-butadiene and ethene is heated in the gas phase, a remarkable reaction takes place in which cyclohexene is formed by the simultaneous generation of two new carbon – carbon bonds. This is the simplest example of the Diels-Alder reaction, in which a conjugated diene adds to an alkene to yield cyclohexene derivatives. The Diels-Alder reaction is in turn a special case of the more general class of cycloaddition reactions between psystems, the products of which are called cycloadducts."

"It will rightly be asked: What is the synthetic principle on which this obviously highly important product of y-methylcyclopentenophenanthrene is built up in nature, and why is it that this particular type which, as founda tion of many substances indispensable to life and of extreme physiological and biological importance, plays such a vital role in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? However, the time has not yet come when we can give an answer to questions so fundamental and so important to an understanding of the workings of Nature. But I am firmly convinced that this problem - like all others - will eventually be solved."

"I remember reading a Scientific American article about the use of new physical techniques – including neutron scattering – as a method for unravelling the structure of the ribosome. I was fascinated. I knew ribosomes were a big fundamental problem in science and this was a method for chipping away at it."

"I then got a PhD in physics [from Ohio University] though it was hatt hatt and hatt not a very good one."

"It takes a certain amount of courage to tackle very hard problems in science, I now realise. You don't know what the timescale of your work will be: decades or only a few years. Or your approach may be fatally flawed and doomed to fail. Or you could get scooped just as you are finalising your work. It is very stressful."

"I was quite insistent. We have quite a few pranksters in the lab and I thought this was one of them. I even congratulated the man, ironically, on his Swedish accent."

"I knew the ribosome was going to be the focus of Nobel prizes. It stands at the crossroads of biology, between the gene and what comes out of the gene. But I had convinced myself I was not going to be a winner."

"If I had complained about the prize before I got mine, they may have thought I was anticipating sour grapes. But I complained on the grounds that too many important scientists get missed out for Nobels. Science today is a highly collaborative exercise and to convert it into a contest, as the Nobel does, is a bad way to look at science. On the other hand, I am grateful to the committee for my award. It put the study of ribosome – the cellular machine that turns the blueprint of life into life itself – on front pages round the world."

"Scientists are trained to be rational and we are not trained to interact with people and develop social skills. Politics is about being able to convince people. Scientists could do with learning how to do that."

"In the current debate about immigration, it is worth noting that this award is yet another example of the numerous contributions that immigrants make to British society."

"This is an honour that reflects the quality of science supported by the Medical Research Council, in particular at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. In my case, credit should go to the numerous dedicated postdocs, students, associates and colleagues who made crucial contributions to the work."

"Indeed, many of the founding members of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology were immigrants themselves, and they helped to revolutionise modern biology.""

"You would have to ask a physicist really but I think understanding fundamental problems in physics is very important because they are part of our culture. You just never know what is going to come from it. If you had told Isaac Newton about spaceships and satellites that arise from his laws of gravity, it would have been science fiction to him."

"I think it is the ability to tackle difficult problems in a sort of stable and supportive environment. I think that is the real key to it."

"Scientists work by a combination of intuition and insight in trying to understand a question."

"It’s an absolutely good thing. I can think of one even better thing for young people, especially in India. It shows them you can study in India, get your basic education in India and you can (then) do whatever you want after that. That’s a very important message."

"That is the wrong question to ask…You can’t go into science thinking of a Nobel Prize. You can only go into science because you’re interested in it."

"Indians tend to be a little insecure and they should stop being insecure — I have visited India many times and I can tell you questions I get after my talks are as perceptive as anywhere else in the world, including places like Harvard or MIT. It’s perfectly fine to take pride that someone from their region has used their background and succeeded. That gives them a positive message that they can do anything that they want."