Chemists From The United States

"I was always interested in science. When John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, I remember riding my tricycle and thinking that I too wanted to be an astronaut. Later, when I became an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, three of my first lab members had segued into biochemistry after first starting in aerospace engineering. So I appreciate how NASA and other big-science efforts promote science by inspiring kids."

"I grew up on U.S. military bases in Korea and Japan. My father emigrated from Korea and worked at the U.S. embassies in Seoul and Tokyo. My mother was a finance clerk at the embassy. I have one brother who’s an engineer and builds airplanes."

"Science, that was going to save the world in H. G. Wells' time, is regimented, strait-jacketed, scared shitless, its universal language diminished to one word, security."

"Four centuries ago, Machiavelli was thinking of certain great problems of human society and writing two famous books. In so doing he reached scientific generalizations about the influence of the sentiments upon the actions of men and, through these actions, upon the fate of human societies. As a whole, these conclusions stand; but from this great and ingenious work of Machiavelli's almost no developments have followed. The science of statecraft and of the influence of the sentiments upon human behavior is little different to-day from what it was in in the 16th century."

"It is in proportion to our success or failure in conceiving facts simply that sciences are abstract or concrete, rational or descriptive. In these respects the contrast is great between the physical and the biological sciences. The figure of the earth, its path about the sun, and its relations to the other planets are readily conceivable in a first approximation as simple; but the forms of life seem complex, their activities manifold, and the concatenations interminable. Therefore, unlike celestial mechanics, the science of biology, which is the record of efforts accurately to describe and clearly to understand living things, is chiefly a science descriptive of concrete fact. It bears little resemblance to the more perfect science and as yet is in no danger of a relativist revolution. It has never attained, perhaps, as some have argued, it can never in any respect achieve and should not strive for the abstractness, the elegance, and the simplicity which are the mark of the classical epoch of many the physical sciences and the ideal of those who follow Newton and Willard Gibbs."

"... More explicitly than ever before the modern principles of physical science seem to compel us to recognized absolute mechanical necessity in all things. We may not understand organic regulations, or organic evolution, or the origin of life; in fact we are still unable with the necessary clearness to represent to ourselves the structure of a cell; yet theses are at least phenomena. As phenomena they are subject to the two laws of thermodynamics. For the laws of conservation and degradation of energy have long since supplanted Leibniz's rudimentary idea of the conservation of ', as the ground of our conception of necessary causation."

"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.”"

"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.""

"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.]"

"... 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."

"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."

"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 !""

"... 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!""

"... 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'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 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."

"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."

"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.""

"Two years ago, I was working on my laptop in an airport lounge in Newark, New Jersey, when I glanced up and saw a couple walking with their two boys. The younger boy slowly made his way on crutches, displaying the telltale signs of a hereditary disease called muscular dystrophy. Generally manifesting in childhood, the disease steadily robs those who have it of their ability to walk. Eventually, I knew, the crutches would no longer be enough. My heart skipped a beat. Most types of muscular dystrophy originate with genetic mutations that weaken key muscle proteins, and I had just come from a meeting where a cure appeared possible, using CRISPR technology to rewrite the DNA of kids just like him. Imagining how the technology I’d helped create could change this boy’s life, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Beyond hope and wonder, I was filled with a sense of fierce urgency to expand CRISPR’s impact to the people around the world who need it most."

"... it's kind of a catchy acronym. It stands for Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Oh! Don't make me say that again. ... What it means — what it symbolizes — is an immune system in bacteria that uses sequences of DNA (that come originally from viruses) ... that are transcribed into molecules of RNA that can use a search-and-destroy mechanism in cells to find and cut up virus genetic material"

"I had this impression from the media that science was for old white guys, people who looked like Einstein, that it wasn’t for people like me ..."

"... CRISPR is, in fact, a bacterial immune system. It’s an ancient system that evolved in microbes to allow prevention of viral infection. Our interest in this started with that fundamental biology, asking, “How does this work?” We did a collaborative research project with Emmanuelle Charpentier, a medical microbiologist, and our work with her laboratory revealed that one of the components of this CRISPR immune system is, in fact, a protein that’s called , that can be programmed to find and cut virus DNA. We published this work back in the summer of 2012, and for me, life hasn't been the same since."

"... I just think you have to embrace your passions. You have to really go for it. People that have been less successful, in my opinion, are those that dabble in something, but then don’t really give it their all. They almost never give themselves a chance to succeed, as they back off too soon. I think for young people, I tell them go for it, find supportive mentors who will help you through the tough times, and then just keep going. Because if you have a good idea, it’s probably going to work out in some way. You may not be able to predict how, but you should just keep pursuing it."

"When I was taught biology, we learned about the structure and code of DNA, and we learned about how proteins do all the heavy lifting in cells, and RNA was treated as this dull intermediary, sort of a middle manager ... I was quite surprised that there was this young genius, Jack Szostak, at Harvard who wanted to focus a hundred percent on RNA because he thought that it was the key to understanding the origin of life."

"These scientists, once young and eager, had become gnomes grappling hopelessly with problems far beyond their reach."

"Implicit in the devotion to purifying enzymes, is the faith of a dedicated biochemist of being able to reconstitute in a test tube anything a cell can do."

"When the world is in trouble, chemistry comes to the rescue."

"The early composition of my lab at Berkeley, in fact really the core people that did the work that the Nobel Foundation has recognized me for, if you look at that group of people they are far more diverse than certainly at that time you would see in the average chemistry laboratory. I had a preponderance of female grad students at a time when our representation in the graduate program at Berkeley was maybe 30%, but my lab was over half. I had people from different backgrounds, people who identify as underrepresented minorities, and I think that diversity of people created an environment where we felt we didn't have to play by the same old rules as scientists. We could do things like organic chemistry in living animals. Why not? Right? We didn't have to play by the rules. If there weren't the right chemistries to get the job done, we could invent new chemistries. Why not? We didn't have to play by the rules. And I think that culture, it kind of grew organically, no pun intended, without a whole lot of steering by myself. I was very fortunate that I could actually play a supportive role in my lab and let that diverse group of students find their voice, realize their curiosity, break the rules, and do something that 25 years later some people found impactful. And I owe them a great debt of gratitude."

"Okay so Adam is there anything, do I have action items here?"

"The Koran abounds in excellent moral suggestions and precepts; its composition is so fragmentary that we can not turn to a single page without finding maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary construction yields texts, and mottoes, and rules complete in themselves, suitable for common men in any of the incidents of life."

"Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all others, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race—Mohammed… To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a messenger of God."

"I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit can not be perpetuated forever. … The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe, as, before long, Christendom will have to confess; he has indelibly written it on the heavens, as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe."

"Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government."

"Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute; its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling."

""But, though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a wide-spread plain bordered by the waters, yet he [Magellan] comforted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, is the substance." It was a stout heart - a heart of triple brass - which could thus, against such authority, extract unyielding faith from a shadow."

"Weightlifting is great – makes you feel like Superman. But you lose the edge on flexibility."

"There is a molecular rhythm to life in terms of development"

"Science is not a subject, it's a method. And the method can be applied to anything. Anybody can be a scientist."

"I would love to live in a world where the word “transgender” serves the same simple purpose — a mere sharing of information about my life experiences — but unfortunately, it doesn’t. On top of being a descriptor, the word "transgender" is also politically loaded. But that is not my, nor other trans people’s, fault. As discussed in the last section, there’s a long history of people hating, ostracizing, and criminalizing us, and much of this history took place before words like "transgender," "transphobia," and analogous terms even existed. In fact, those terms were created in response to that marginalization, not the other way around. And even if I were to relinquish my trans identity, those people would still exist and continue to discriminate against me for supposedly being a sinner, or freak, or deviant, or for being delusional, or whatever other rationales they might concoct in order to justify their bigotry."

"Accusations that IP is inherently “narcissistic” and “divisive” have become quite prevalent among EC-centric leftists lately. [...] In addition to disregarding all forms of non-EC marginalization, accusations that IP activism is inherently “narcissistic” or "divisive" severely confuse cause and effect. After all, I’m not the one who is “obsessed” with my identity. [...] It’s the people who harbor anti-trans attitudes who are obsessed with my identity, not the other way around! While I would absolutely love to live in a world where my trans identity was not especially notable or worth calling attention to, these people insist on making an issue out of it. Furthermore, by making a distinction between transgender people (who they single out for discrimination) and non-transgender people (whose identities and experiences they respect), it is they (not us) who are the ones being divisive. Once we acknowledge this causality, it becomes clear that IP is not an expression of navel-gazing or narcissism, but rather a form of organized resistance against those who are actively trying to delegitimize and disenfranchise us."

"Women who insist that trans women are not women often object to being called “cis women” under the false assumption that it somehow undermines their femaleness — this is not at all the purpose of this language. The sole purpose of cis terminology is to name the unmarked majority (similar to how one might refer to white women, or heterosexual women, or able-bodied women, etc.). In other words, referring to someone as “cisgender” simply means that they have not had a transgender experience."

"Once a person acknowledges that they possess some form of privilege, they are more likely to accept the reality that they are not in any way objective about the form of marginalization in question"

"Here is how I describe the concept of privilege to skeptics: Do you believe that marginalized/minority groups face discrimination and are as a result? If the answer is yes, then another equally valid way of describing the same situation is to say that dominant/majority groups are relatively advantaged in comparison. “Privilege” simply refers to those advantages. One of the reasons why activists frame such matters in terms of privilege is to illustrate how *all of us* are impacted by unjust hierarchies and systems, even if it is not always apparent to us."

"I mentioned at the outset that I dislike the term "identity politics." This is because the phrase seems to suggest that our identities (rather than the marginalization we face) is the most salient feature of our activism. Indeed, this is probably why those who oppose IP-umbrella activism seem so fond of calling it “identity politics” in the first place. [...] In contrast, within IP circles, the term is often reserved for a specific brand of single-issue activism that completely precludes perspectives from those who do not share the identity in question."

"Trans women differ greatly from one another. Perhaps the only thing that we share in common is a self-understanding that there was something wrong with our being assigned a male sex at birth and/or that we should be female instead. While some cisgender people refuse to take our experiences seriously, the fact of the matter is that transgender people can be found in virtually every culture and throughout history; current estimates suggest that we make up 0.2 – 0.3% of the population [or possibly more]. [...] In other words, we simply exist."

"There are numerous forms of marginalization that exist in our society: , classism, sexism, , heterosexism, and so on. If you happen to be on the wrong side of any of these hierarchies, you will face many inequities and injustices. ... Some people are single-issue activists that are only concerned about a single form of marginalization, usually one that impacts them personally. Single-issue perspectives create a distorted view of the world, and lead activists to propose solutions that will help some people while hurting others and leaving countless more behind. ... In contrast, others of us take a more intersectional approach, recognizing that all forms of marginalization intersect with and exacerbate one another, and that we must challenge all of them simultaneously."

"Many cissexual people seem to have a hard time accepting the idea that they too have a subconscious sex — a deep-rooted understanding of what sex their bodies should be. I suppose that when a person feels right in the sex they were born into, they are never forced to locate or question their subconscious sex, to differentiate it from their physical sex. In other words, their subconscious sex exists, but it is hidden from their view. They have a blind spot. (5 - Blind Spots: On Subconscious Sex and Gender Entitlement)"

"People usually gravitate toward single-issue activism because they are unconcerned about forms of marginalization that do not personally impact them."