Chemistry

Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Professor Bo G. Malmström of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, In the beginning there was light. Light played an important role in the origin of life on earth, and the radiation of the sun is an absolute prerequisite for the forms of life…

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An important step in biochemical research was taken in 1980 when Hartmut Michel managed to crystallize a membrane protein (bacteriorhodopsin) after having solubilized the lipid bilayer of the membrane with a detergent. Detergents, which are structurally similar to membrane lipids, form micelles in water. They bind to membrane proteins with their fatty, hydrophobic tails creating…

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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2007 1918 Fritz Haber awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber-Bosch process. 1932 Irving Langmuir awarded the first Nobel Prize for general surface chemistry. 1956 Cyril Hinshelwood awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, among other things for the Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism for surface reactions. 1992 Ilya Prigogine awarded the Nobel…

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Biographical

Walther Hermann Nernst was born in Briesen, West Prussia, on June 25, 1864. His father, Gustav Nernst, was a district judge. He spent his early school years at Graudentz, and subsequently went to the Universities of Zurich, Berlin and Graz (Ludwig Boltzmann and Albert von Ettinghausen), studying physics and mathematics, before proceeding to Wurzburg (Friedrich…

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Interview

Questions and answers After the 2007 Nobel Prize announcements, visitors to Nobelprize.org had the possibility to submit questions to the 2007 Nobel Laureates. Here, Gerhard Ertl answers a selection of the questions. Question: Apart from the development of more effective adsorption catalysts, what in your opinion are the most important applications of the knowledge we…

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