Archive for April, 2007

In a bittersweet turn of events, the chemical blogosphere is losing Carmen and her blog, She Blinded Me with Science. The upside is that she landed a job at C&EN, so we’ll get to enjoy her stuff in bigger doses. I’m guessing the pay is better, too.

For those keeping score, this marks the third time that a chemistry magazine has lured a popular blogger into its ranks. Carmen follows in the footsteps of Derek Lowe and Dylan Stiles, who now pen monthly columns for RSC’s Chemistry World.

It’s definitely fitting, because of all the chemical blogs out there, Carmen’s is the one most like C&EN (note: this is a compliment, not an insult). Her posts are meaty, often read like mini-feature articles, are always on topic (science/chemistry), and have a serious/professional tone.  Finally, she avoids making negative posts (no bloggarific mud-slinging) and doesn’t use swear words.  In short, it’s no surprise that C&EN snapped her up.

In contrast, if I were to get a job at C&EN and submit anything like the stuff written here, Rudy Baum would defenestrate my computer and me along with it. I’ve actually heard ChemBark called The O’Reilly Factor of chemistry blogs. Can you believe that?  While I was initially revolted by that thought—I often find myself in disagreement with Billy—a deeper analysis has led me to the conclusion that the comparison is valid. After all, we both frequently address hot-button issues, we don’t shy away from sharing our opinions, we occasionally come off as smug jerks, and a significant percentage of our audience is composed of people who hate our guts. That said, I think he is more of a loudmouth and that I make more sense than he does.

Anyway, all of this ridiculousness got me thinking about what television shows are the most analogous to other chemistry blogs out there.  Here’s what I decided:

The Chem Blog — The Daily Show with Jon Stewart — Good information is presented with an editorial spin in a humorous manner.

Carbon-Based Curiosities — Live with Regis and Kelly — A healthy balance of research news and assorted fluff, although Excimer swears more than Regis.

Totally Synthetic — NFL Primetime – Paul D. breaks down total syntheses like Ron Jaworski breaks down game film. ChemDraw = the Telestrator.

In the Pipeline — Money magazine — OK, I’m cheating here; I can’t think of a good TV analogue of Derek’s blog, which is a mix of technical news, industry news, lab research, and human interest stories. In this regard, I think it’s like an issue of Money magazine for drug discovery instead of financial matters.

Chemical Musings — Countdown — Like Milo’s blog, this British game show is filled with puzzles and includes more banter than your typical American game show. At least, it did when the great Richard Whiteley was host.

Sceptical Chymist — The Sports Reporters — This show put a camera in front of a panel of four reporters (here: editors) and allowed them to talk about whatever newsworthy issues they pleased.  It was definitely more professional and thoughtful than most sports shows.

Lamentations on Chemistry — Andy Rooney’s Segments on 60 Minutes — Thoughts from a grizzled chemistry veteran.

Post Doc Propter Doc — Dilbert — Her blog is about her life in lab, and it often sounds like a sit-com.

Org Prep Daily — The Essence of Emeril — BAMMM!! Recipes with flair.

Chemical Forums — Washington Journal (C-SPAN’s morning show) — The focus of both is on audience participation.

The Chemical Informatics Crowd (e.g., Peter Murray-Rust and Egon) — CNBC Network — Much like CNBC covers the financial world inside and out, the chemical informatics community has taken to blogging en masse, making that subject the deepest explored issue in the chemical blogosphere.

The Half-Decent Pharmaceutical Chemistry Blog, Curious Wavefunction, Whistling in the Wind — The National Public Radio lineup — There are a lot of blogs that resemble the programming of NPR, in that they are quality shows that never get the attention they deserve.

It’s difficult to pigeonhole blogs into TV equivalents, so some of the above comparisons ring more true than others. To any of you who feel offended, just remember that none of these is worse than being called another Bill O’Reilly.

The Chemmy Award for Organic Achievement of the Year goes to:

Melanie Sanford (Michigan) for establishing that Pd(IV) intermediates are important in at least one class of catalytic C–H bond activation reactions

I had decided on the recipient of this Chemmy a long time ago but procrastinated on writing the citation. This weekend, commenter “tuna fish” mentioned that Dr. Sanford might be moving to Yale or Caltech, and while I have no idea if this is true, the comment reminded me of my fondness for her work and that now is as good a time as any to write about it.

First off, trying to “contain” the Chemmy achievement awards in the various chemical disciplines to one year (here: 2006) is going to be difficult, because cool discoveries often take time to develop and get noticed. In this case, Sanford’s C–H activation work can be traced back to 2004. It was only last year, however, that the picture became clear (at least, clear to me).

When I learned organometallic chemistry—way back in 2002—we were essentially taught never to invoke Pd(IV) intermediates in our mechanisms.  Pd(IV) was simply too energetically-inaccessible to be relevant in most cases. Along these lines, I witnessed the merciless ridicule of more than one student by the teaching staff for using Pd(IV). Instead, good boys and girls used the Pd(0)/Pd(II) couple in their mechanisms.

In 2004, Sanford came along and published a simple case of catalytic, chelate-directed C–H bond oxidation:

Instead of outlining a mechanism that shuttled back and forth between Pd(0) and Pd(II), Sanford proposed a mechanism involving Pd(IV):

Naughty!  Or so I thought.  A subsequent study essentially extinguished all doubt that the Pd(IV) mechanism was correct. In this 2005 JACS comm., the Sanford crew hypothesized they could change the system to stabilize the Pd(IV) intermediate, found they could actually isolate it, got a crystal structure showing that it was indeed a Pd(IV) species, and then showed that heating it gave the same types of products that they saw in reactions where the intermediate could not be isolated. Crystal structures are the closest thing we can get to having incontrovertible photographic evidence of what molecules are actually doing, so you can’t really argue this one.  Score one for Pd(IV).

I know a lot of the hardcore synthesis crowd isn’t enamored with this sort of C–H activation chemistry because it is chelate-directed, which limits the scope of the reaction. That’s true, but what makes this batch of work so interesting is not the synthetic utility as much as the scientific value. We gained a new appreciation for the mechanism at play in these reactions and had to reassess a long-held notion of what isn’t reasonable.

So, congratulations to Dr. Sanford and coworkers. Enjoy your Chemmy and keep the good work coming.  And if any of you donkeys out there thinks there was someone else more deserving of this award, feel free to register chemmeow.com and start your own damn blog. 

Just how hard is life in chemistry at Harvard? It’s brutal. Everything is done to the extreme, and sometimes, people crack under the stress. We lost a trusted friend this week when the DeuceGobbler 3000 was hauled out of our bathroom on a stretcher. All that remains is an empty stall—a constant reminder of the emptiness in our hearts:

Seriously…I hope we get a new toilet soon. The plumber “sealed” the sewer line by cramming a wad of TP into it (see above), and as you can imagine, this was not the best solution. The area around our bathroom smells like 3-methylindole and friends.

In other news, I can’t believe the toilet managed to beat me out of here.

I know you’ve all been asking yourselves, “Who’s going to win the next Nobel Prize in Chemistry?”

Well, bookmakers at the fabulous ChemBark Hotel & Casino have been hard at work revising last year’s odds. The new line is presented below, and the first thing you’ll notice is that more than a few biological achievements have crept into the mix.

Remember that these numbers address the question of who will win the Prize, not who should win it. As always, feel free to share your criticism in the comments. The odds may change as the event draws closer.

The Field (everything not listed below), 3-1
Molecular Studies of Gene Recognition, Ptashne, 15-1
Nuclear Hormone Signaling, Chambon/Evans/Jensen, 15-1
Fluorescent Probes/GFP, Tsien/+, 17-1
Transition-Metal-Catalyzed Cross-Couplings, Suzuki/Heck/Sonogashira/+/–, 17-1
Instrumentation/Techniques in Genomics, Venter/+, 19-1
Self-Assembled Monolayers, Whitesides/Nuzzo/+, 19-1
Biological Membrane Vesicles, Rothman/Schekman/+, 19-1
Techniques in DNA Synthesis, Caruthers/Hood/+, 19-1
Modern Surface Chemistry, Somorjai, 29-1
Molecular Structure of the Ribosome, Steitz/Moore/Yonath/+/–, 29-1
Telomeres & Telomerases, Blackburn/Greider/Szostak, 29-1
Application of Lasers to the Study of Chemical Reactions, Zare, 39-1
Bioinorganic Chemistry, Lippard/Holm/Gray/+/–, 39-1
Mechanistic Enzymology, Walsh/Knowles, 49-1
Fluorocarbons, DuPont/Curran/–, 49-1
Combinatorial Chemistry/DOS, Schreiber/+, 49-1
Pigments of Life, Battersby/+, 49-1
Global Warming, Thatcher/Gore, 99-1
Dendrimers, Frechet/Tomalia/+, 99-1
Development of the Birth Control Pill, Djerassi, 99-1
Development of Chemical Biology, Schultz/Schreiber/+, 99-1
Molecular Modeling and Assorted Applications, Karplus/Houk/Schleyer/+/–, 99-1
Contributions to Organic Synthesis, Danishefsky/Nicolaou/Evans/Ley/Trost/Stork/Wender/Kishi/+/–, 199-1
Application of NMR to Organic Chemistry, Roberts, 199-1
Understanding of Organic Stereochemistry, Mislow, 199-1
Mechanical Bonds and Applications, Sauvage/Stoddart/+, 199-1
Nobel Gas Reactivity, Bartlett/+, 199-1
Molecular Recognition, Dervan/+, 399-1
Contributions to Bioorganic Chemistry, Westheimer/Breslow/+, 399-1
Development of Nanotechnology, Lieber/Whitesides/Alivisatos/Seeman/+/–, 399-1
Molecular Machines, Stoddart/Tour/+/–, 499-1
Studies in the Origin of Life, Miller/Orgel/+/–, 99999-1

Past Awards & the “Pre-Nobels”
Past Nobel Prizes in Chemistry
Lasker Award for Basic Research
Wolf Prize in Chemistry
Welch Award in Chemistry
Kyoto Prize
Von Hippel Award
Science Magazine’s Breakthroughs of the Year

Stories
The History of GFP
A Really Biased History of the Global Warming Issue
History of Noble Gas Compounds

Buzz in the Blogosphere
Derek Lowe, In the Pipeline: 2005, 2006
Sceptical Chymist: 2006
Curious Wavefunction: 2006
Endless Frontier: 2006-1, 2006-2, 2006-3

From last week’s Harvard Police log:

6:11 p.m.—A Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officer was dispatched to a report of a suspicious odor in Jordan Hall South believed to be carbon monoxide in the building. The officer met with the reporting party who stated that while working in the building they smelled a strong odor and began to feel sick so they pulled the fire alarm to evacuate the building. Cambridge Fire Department tested the air quality which came back negative for carbon monoxide and deemed the building safe for re-entry. The reporting individual was treated by EMTs with oxygen on the scene and refused any further medical assistance.

Some people at Harvard are so talented they can smell carbon monoxide, an odorless and tasteless gas.  I’d like to see someone at Free University of Berlin do that.

And pay no attention to the item where an officer caught two guys smoking weed and just let them go.  Carry on, good sirs.

Princeton University took home the Chemmy for Outstanding Department of 2006, and it looks like they’re going to make a run at defending the title in 2007. Valued sources recently told the ChemBark News Network that the Ivy League school has made generous offers to a number of outstanding young organic chemists who are already tenured in top-five departments. Fresh on the heels of adding Sorensen and MacMillan, Princeton is looking to firmly establish itself as a hotbed of organic chemistry for years to come.

Raiding other schools’ faculties has long been a strategy for building departmental strength. Where the Yankees and Red Sox are the baseball teams most willing to reach deep into their pockets for big-name talent, Harvard is the school most famous for doing so in chemistry. Most of the department’s big guns were hired as tenured professors from other schools: Corey and Jacobsen from Illinois, Whitesides from MIT, Evans and Myers from Caltech, Lieber from Columbia, Schreiber from Yale, and Kahne from Princeton. On the flip side, assistant professors have had a miserable record of gaining tenure in the department (until recently).

While pursuing the free agent market at the expense of decimating your farm system is generally a poor idea in baseball, it is a viable strategy in the world of chemistry. Granting someone tenure equates to giving them a contract for life, something unheard of in the sports world. Unfortunately for universities, it often takes more than seven years to get a handle on the quality of an assistant professor. Hiring a proven forty-year-old is a much safer bet. And unlike in sports, there are no salary caps or luxury taxes in academia, so there are no limits to the amount of money you can spend.

Of course, the strategy of buying talent is contingent on being rich—the more money a school has, the better it can play the game. Schools with less funding not only have a harder time reeling in heavy hitters, they have a harder time retaining members of their faculty who’ve attracted the interest of other schools. Money doesn’t just factor into salary, but also into expanding lab space and improving instrumentation. Ambitious professors want to improve the efficiency of their research and have the flexibility to expand their labs and their programs.

There are some factors that money can’t help.  Geographic location is often important, as it influences features such as the local culture and the employment market for professors’ significant others. And as with anything related to academia, politics can play a big role. If the deans at a school get on an interdisciplinary kick, there many be money available for a nanobiophysical chemist but not for a synthetic one. An aspect that is particularly intriguing about the Princeton move is that it is geared towards pure chemistry instead of the interdisciplinary flavor of the month. That’s rare nowadays.

Of course, this story is still developing and nothing has been set in stone, but things are looking mighty exciting if you’re an organic chemist at Princeton.

For any curious parties, the first batch of Chemical Ed magnets went in the mail today. There are still plenty of these puppies available—send in your SASE today.

In other blog housekeeping news, there are a number of items in the March 26th edition of C&E News that deserve discussion, including the Priestley Medal address and Beth Halford’s piece on racial diversity in chemistry. I’ve added these to the official ChemBark To-Do list. The 3/26 issue also had a letter to the editor (sub. req’d) in which Max Taitel had the following to say:

Programs like “NOVA” do great service in presenting the tremendous contributions of scientific endeavors to everyday lives. They follow in the great tradition of the late Carl Sagan who appeared some 20 times on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson to describe the wonders of the universe to that audience. We need to reaffirm the good side of science in the eyes of the general public, without denying some of the downside, and perhaps be able to someday revive the DuPont slogan “Better Living through Chemistry.”

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A recent chemistry blog described a student chemist’s frustration in overhearing a couple trying to decipher the ingredient label in a supermarket. Maybe the ACS Education Division staff and the ACS Division of Chemical Education could work with school and industry people to create internships where a student chemist could work on the supermarket floor to give hands-on interpretation about the chemicals listed in food products.

Unless some other chemist was blogging about running errands, the writer was referring to my post on a husband and wife who were having trouble purchasing folate at CVS. As you would have guessed from the previous post on Percy Julian, I am in complete agreement with him that we need to do a better job of convincing the public that life would stink without the chemical industry. Just today, the NY Times ran an article with the headline “Some Suspect Chemical Mix in Pet Food” about the recent mass pet death. (You see, chemicals = death = bad.) That said, I hope the suggestion about putting chemistry students in the aisles of supermarkets was made with tongue in cheek.

Also, many thanks to the person who alerted me to the letter; I completely missed it. Whether it be from a randomly placed magnet or a mention in our profession’s top news magazine, it’s always gratifying to learn that a few people actually read this blog.

Back in February, I caught the two-hour NOVA special on the life of Percy Julian.  I’ll give it 3.5 stars out of 5.  Julian’s story is really interesting, and amazingly, the producers did an exceptional job of conveying the excitement of research in organic chemistry.  While it gets a little slow towards the end, the program is well worth watching.

When I first heard about the episode, I was skeptical.  Part of me was upset that of all the excellent chemists in the history of chemistry, Percy Julian was picked to be featured on TV.  When faced with the decision to select one chemist to represent our profession, most of us would pick a legend like Woodward or Pauling.  So, I sat there asking myself, “Why does Julian deserve to hold the torch for chemistry on television?”

Adding more fuel to the fire was that the program was titled “Forgotten Genius”.  Given the circumstances of it being Black History Month, the obvious implication was that society had “forgotten” about Julian because he was black.  Also, “genius” is a word that is probably used more frequently than is warranted.  Both of these editorial statements in the title kind of put me on the attack before the program even aired.  On the plus side, the potential for controversy definitely piqued my interest.

After watching the program, I came out with a much more favorable opinion than I had going in.  The producers did a fantastic job of showing that Julian was an excellent chemist and an amazing man.  Any argument to the contrary is simply untenable.  Here’s a quick rundown of his credentials: He grew up in the Jim Crow South and tenaciously pursued his education into college, where excelled in his courses by finishing first in his class at DePauw. He gained admission to Harvard for graduate study, but had to leave with a master’s degree due to his inability to secure a teaching fellowship because of his race.  After completing a Ph.D. overseas, he set up a lab at DePauw, where he beat Sir Robert Robinson to the total synthesis of physostigmine and embarrassed the synthetic legend in the process. Despite his credentials, Julian was unable to secure a job at Depauw or in industry because he was black.  Eventually, he was offered a position at Glidden.  There, he directed the Soya Products Division, and his discoveries of uses for soy mirrored everything that George Washington Carver is celebrated for with the peanut, and more. Julian made important contributions to total synthesis, steroid chemistry, and materials chemistry.  After Glidden terminated its steroid work, Julian moved on to start his own chemical company, where he challenged the Syntex monopoly in front of Congress and won.  And as if all of these achievements weren’t impressive enough, Julian accomplished them in the face of an appalling amount of racism in both the chemical establishment and the Chicago community.

Simply amazing.  I knew parts of his story, but most of the details were completely new to me.  While I got more than my money’s worth, even at the end, the title “Forgotten Genius” left a sour taste in my mouth.  Personally, I hadn’t “forgotten” about Julian—I never really knew his story.  While society may have forgotten about him, Julian is hardly unique in this regard.  Our society didn’t forget about Percy Julian because we’re racist, but because he worked in chemistry and in industry, where the credit is spread more thinly. How many industrial chemists can the general public name?  I’m a chemist, and while I didn’t know that Percy Julian developed soy into fire suppressants at Glidden, I still don’t know the names of the scientists who invented pressure-sensitive adhesives at 3M, nor the people who developed Viagra at Pfizer.  These are remarkable achievements, but aside from Carothers, Plunkett, and Derek Lowe, I’m at a loss to name more than a handful of industrial chemists whom I don’t know personally.

As for my initial reaction to Julian being chosen over Woodward or Pauling, perhaps my problem was that I watched this program as an insider wanting the fundamental history of chemistry to be told, whereas most viewers probably tuned in to be entertained.  After giving the issue more thought, it occurred to me that Julian is a much better person to present to the general public than someone like Woodward.  While we appreciate RBW’s accomplishments as experts, his creativity would be very hard to convey to a lay audience.  Contrast that with the achievements of Julian, whose crosses to bear are much more obvious and easy for the general public to relate to. 

Indeed, with a few exceptions (like presidential addresses and debates), the main purpose of television programs is to get ratings—even on PBS.  The purpose of television is not to give credit to deserving chemists or to educate the public.  Percy Julian’s story was compelling and perfect for Black History Month. In this regard, it was a win for NOVA, but it was also a win for chemistry.  For one night, the show made our science seem exciting and relevant, though perhaps elitist and inaccessible.  Even with those minor drawbacks, we should take what we can get.  Chemists are simply awful at promoting chemistry to the general public. Contrast this with physics, where Einstein is a God, cosmology has fueled countless sci-fi series like Star Trek, and Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson appear on TV left and right. Who is the face of chemistry? For all the good that chemistry does in the world, all we get is bad press in the form of chemical spills, plant explosions, weapons of mass destruction, hazardous waste, and editorials on how drug companies are evil and oil companies make too much money.  Even the word “chemical” has a negative connotation.  While one TV show on PBS won’t fix our problem, recounting the stories of some “chemical heroes” will go a long way.  NOVA made an excellent choice in Julian.  Now, will other chemists follow or is this party over?