ChemBark

Aquí está mi lista de los cinco mejores químicos hispanos en la historia:

5. Andrés Manuel del Río – El descubridor del vanadio.

4. Luis Miramontes – Inventor del primer anticonceptivo oral (con Carl Djerassi y George Rosenkranz en Syntex).

3. Mario Molina – Demostró la amenaza de los CFC a la capa de ozono de la Tierra

2. Pedro Cuatrecasas – El padre de la cromatografía de afinidad y un químico médico muy bueno.

1. Severo Ochoa – Descubrió cómo los sistemas biológicos sintetizar ARN

0. Henry Eyring – El padre de la teoría de estados transiciónes nació y se crió en México, pero él era americano.

Late last week, the editors at Nature Chemistry conducted a Twitter poll to answer the age-old question: ”Who is the greatest chemist of all-time?”  Such a conversation falls right in my wheelhouse, and in honour of the lads at NChem, I am going to write this post in English.  (I am qualified to do this, as my mother’s from England.)

The results of the poll are summarized on the NChem blog, Sceptical Chymist.  Of the 86 votes cast, the following chemists received three or more:

Linus Pauling (16)
Dmitri Mendeleev (11)
Antoine Lavoisier (7)
Marie Curie (6)
R.B. Woodward (4)
Michael Faraday (4)
Gilbert Lewis (3)

Perhaps Sir Winston Churchill was right when he said, “the best argument against a democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”  Incidentally, please follow my Twitter feed (@ChemBark) if you are interested in reading about what I eat for dinner.

With all due respect to my Twitter “tweeps”,  are you daft?  Who picks Marie Curie as the greatest chemist ever?  Yes, she was a fantastic chemist.  She might be most inspirational chemist ever, but the greatest ever?  How could six of you agree on that?

Here’s how I see it using football as an analogy: if Pauling is Manchester United, Curie is Everton; she’s right up there in the top flight, but she’s not qualifying for the Champions League.

There were some other head-scratchers in the also-rans:  Moseley? Noyori? Walden? Cannizzaro?  Don’t get me wrong, they are all great chemists too, but number one?  And let’s go back to Mendeleev.  Yes, the concept of the periodic table is fantastic—and Mendeleev was robbed of a Nobel Prize for it—but I don’t think that this contribution alone is enough to justify a number-one vote.  Others chemists made similar observations as Mendeleev, and even then the work was incomplete.  The work in quantum mechanics that explains why the Periodic Table appears as it does is a greater contribution than the table itself.

Coming up with a rank-ordered list of the greatest chemists is a tough task, but I took a stab at it in the NChem comments thread.  (Since then, I’ve decided to swap my #3 and #4.)

Top 5 Chemists…EVER

5.  R. B. Woodward

He is the supreme deity of organic chemistry, and I’m still not sure he belongs in the top 5.  Nevertheless, the magnitude of his accomplishments in a career that spanned the heyday of the field is humbling.  He won the Nobel Prize in ’65 for his work in organic synthesis, and could have shared in two others: the ’73 prize for organometallics and the ’81 prize for orbital symmetry (the Woodward-Hoffmann rules).

4.  Antoine Lavoisier

A rigorous experimentalist with major contributions to the understanding of gases, nomenclature, chemical education, and analytical chemistry.

3. Willard Gibbs

Laid out the foundation of chemical thermodynamics.  Kind of important.

2.  G.N. Lewis

Discovered the covalent bond and made major contributions to chemical thermodynamics, photochemistry, and acid-base theory.  He probably should have won a share of the ’34 Nobel Prize for the discovery of deuterium.

1.  Linus Pauling

Number one despite his rampant medical quackery.  Applied quantum mechanics to understanding the nature of the chemical bond—a concept that lies at the very heart of chemistry.  Also made major contributions to structural biology, particularly the structure of proteins.  He might have won the race to the structure of DNA had he been privy to the same data as Watson and Crick.

My confidence in these assignments is low; I could easily have overlooked something.  Feel free to ridicule me in the comments.  And just for fun, here’s a blast from the past: my 2006 list of greatest organic chemists.

Chemical and Engineering News brought its photo albums out of the attic yesterday and posted PDF scans of its old issues.  What a treasure trove.  As of now, the archives appears only to go back to 1988, but it already includes some real gems.

Naturally, the first thing I was inclined to do was search for my advisors.  I was not disappointed.  The September 15th, 1969 issue features Harry Gray playing guitar on the cover.  The accompanying story discusses his receipt of the Pure Award in Chemistry, and the lead paragraph pretty much sums up the awesomeness of the article:

Harry Gray talks in a breezy vernacular more often associated with locker rooms than with chemistry labs; he owns two fast cars, a Corvette and a 1957 Jaguar XK140; he loves tennis and plays the game with a loping, easy grace that belies his 6-foot 4-inch frame. Like two thirds of American males, Dr. Gray has been known to bend an elbow with the boys, and even jests that his involvement in what he calls “inorganic biochemistry” resulted from an idea that hit him “on my 17th drink.”

In the same article, Harry pointed to center field with less ambiguity than Ruth in ’32, and declared:

“We’re at a plateau right now in inorganic chemistry,” he says, “and 90% of the people in the field are just spinning their wheels. Sure, we’re making slow progress in a number of areas, but the great renaissance in inorganic which resulted from application of the discoveries of quantum theory is over. In the fifties we had this upsurge of creativity, but in the past few years it has been obvious that most work is just an extension of work done in this renaissance era. Until we go to the next level of creative effort,” Dr. Gray adds, “I don’t believe the excitement is going to reappear.”

The next upturn will come in five or six years, Dr. Gray believes, and he thinks he knows one important area of work that will be responsible for it. His own.

“Inorganic biochemistry”—the area upon which Dr. Gray is placing his bets—is another of those endless, seemingly casual brainstorms which scientists and inventors are wont to have.

Pretty cool.  As a footnote, concerned citizens later wrote letters-to-the-editor to protest the portrayal of Harry’s Jag as “12-cylinder” and to applaud C&EN on not being “uptight”.

Finally, I would lose my membership in the Organic Division if I did not search the archives for all-things-Woodward.  His obituary, which is unsatisfactorily bland, can be found here.  What I want to know is what happened to the 7-29-1947 edition of C&EN?  It is supposed to feature a cover shot of our hero and a colorful story on his days at MIT:

The rest of his life, before he entered MIT at the doddering old age of 16, consisted of being born on April 10, 1917, attending schools at Quincy, Mass., and generally living as an average American youth. One exception to the latter statement might be found, however, in that the great majority of the younger male Americans do not become engrossed in devising a synthesis for quinine. His activity on this problem, which Woodward carried with him from his high school days, taught him, in his own estimation, the great bulk of his knowledge of organic chemistry. He strongly recommends attempting to synthesize a ‘tough molecule’ as the best teacher in this field.

“The success of this Woodward system of self-education was affirmed by Dr. James Flack Norris…’When he [Woodward] entered the institute as a freshman, he already had as much knowledge of organic chemistry as a man normally acquires during four years of enrollment in undergraduate classes.’”

In spite of this, Woodward flunked out of MIT in the middle of his second year. “At that point, the slow [to him] pace of the prescribed chemistry curriculum caused a restlessness and boredom that nearly proved disastrous to his career. Fortunately, as advocates of progressive education will claim, the MIT faculty grasped the situation and designed a curriculum for Woodward’s exclusive use. Its flexibility enabled him to experiment in his own laboratory and spend as little time as he wished in classes, provided, of course, that he presented himself for examinations. This arrangement proved especially helpful to the young scientist because it enabled him to take courses, the total hours of which amounted to more than the 168 found in the conventional week.

“In June 1936, at the end of his third year, MIT awarded Woodward his bachelor of science degree. In the commencement ceremonies of the following June, while his class was receiving their baccalaureate recognition, the student of ‘tough molecules’ donned the gold tassel of the Ph.D.

The C&EN archives also lets us know that long before Nicolaou employed metaphors of Greek mythology, Woodward spoke of “dragons to be slain” in chemistry.  From the same story, it is interesting to note that he got C&EN to treat his Nichols Medal address on progress towards the synthesis of reserpine as off-the-record.

I’ll keep searching for that July 29th, 1947 issue with Woodward on the cover; it is currently missing from the archives.  I can only assume some C&EN editor’s mother found the magazine under a mattress and threw it out.

Anyone remember these?

I don’t…they’re reprint-request postcards from the chemical days of yore.  I’m not sure how old the cards are, but maybe we can calculate it:  since they were printed, the Caltech ZIP code has grown from 91109 to 91125.

I think this is how the system worked:  When you published a paper, you would also order reprints (neatly printed copies of the paper) from the publisher to give to colleagues.  If someone wanted to read your paper and didn’t have access to the journal, he would fill out one of these cards and mail it to you, and you’d sent him back a reprint.

Despite the woeful inefficiency of the system relative to today, I suppose it had its charms.  Many professors didn’t wait for requests and would mail unsolicited reprints to colleagues and competitors.  I love coming across these papers, which often have some short note scrawled across the top of the page followed by a signature (e.g., “Dear Harold, It looks like we scooped you again.  All the best, Ernest”).

I’m tempted to send a card to a professor to see if the request is honored.  Any suggestions?

(HT to Larry for the cards.)

I love Sporcle.  Love, love, love it.

If you have no idea what Sporcle is, you’re missing out.  It’s a Web site where you can take all sorts of quizzes on geography, history, literature, politics, and…of course…science.  Several quizzes vetted by admins are posted daily, and there’s a library of hundreds of other quizzes from which to choose.

Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of chemistry quizzes, except for random trivia about the elements.  For instance, can you name all of the elements that have single-letter symbols?  What about the elements that are six letters long?  Still remember your amino acid abbreviations?

In celebration of the awesomeness of Sporcle and of chemistry, I’ve made this little quiz:

Can you name all of the Nobel laureates in chemistry?

If you’re feeling saucy, head on over and give it a try.  When you’re done, you can click on “see the most missed” answers to view how you stack up against everyone else who’s taken it.  And, of course, feel free to brag about your score in the comments.  We won’t believe you, but feel free nonetheless.

Here are two of my favorite examples of epic domination within the pages of the Journal of the American Chemical Society:

1)  Streitwieser, A.  J. Am. Chem. Soc.  1944, 66, 2127. (DOI)

Andrew Streitwieser, a legend in the field of physical organic chemistry, published his first paper as a high school student.  It was a single-author communication in JACS submitted from his home address in Queens.  Streitwieser attended (the renowned) Stuyvesant High School and placed 9th with his project in the 1945 Westinghouse Science Talent Search.  His classmate, Ed Kosower, finished first that year.  The two would later go on to co-write a bestselling textbook for sophomore organic chemistry.  (This book gets a 4.5-star rating from me, and you know I’m a picky jerk).

In the JACS paper, Streitwieser gets up in the grill of the authors of a previous JACS communication.  In 1939 (DOI), Kharasch and Brown reported that fluorene is chlorinated by sulfuryl chloride, but they didn’t report the regiochemistry of the reaction.  Streitwieser repeated the reaction, supposed the compound was 2-chlorofluorene based on data in the literature, prepared a sample of authentic 2-chlorofluorene by a known method, and measured the mixed melting point to demonstrate that the compounds were the same.  Oh, and by the way, the “Brown” that this precocious high-school chemist decided to upbraid within the pages of JACS was none other than Nobel laureate H.C. Brown of organoborane fame.   

2) Now, look at these:

Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5518-5526.  (DOI)
Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5526-5531.  (DOI)
Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5531-5534.  (DOI)
Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5535-5538.  (DOI)
Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5538-5542.  (DOI)
Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5542-5546.  (DOI)
Heck, R.F.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1968, 90, 5546-5548.  (DOI)

That’s right, Richard Heck published back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back single-author papers in a 1968 issue of JACS.   And it’s not like these papers are cupcakes; they form the basis for what should earn the man a share of the Nobel Prize.

In the same issue, E.J. Corey has 5 papers, F.A. Cotton has a back-to-back pair, and Roald Hoffmann has a pair of his own.  Did these guys ever leave space for anyone else?