Nobel Prize

The 1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewarded a prime example of how the bonds between different scientific disciplines can form in the most unexpected places. In this instance, a chemist’s curiosity for unusual interactions between molecules provided a crucial biological connection to understanding essential food nutrients important for health and disease. Richard Kuhn was fascinated…

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Contents: Based on materials from the 1999 Nobel Poster for Chemistry.

Retrosynthetic analysis can be compared to the climbing of a tree. You are at the root of the tree (the target molecule) and want to climb to the top branches (the starting materials). The tree branches off many times. You have to choose your way! Which way is the fastest, the easiest and the most…

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Fritz Haber was born on December 9, 1868 in Breslau, Germany, in one of the oldest families of the town, as the son of Siegfried Haber, a merchant. He went to school at the St. Elizabeth classical school at Breslau and he did, even while he was at school, many chemical experiments. From 1886 until…

Jean Frédéric Joliot, born in Paris, March 19, 1900, was a graduate of the Ecole de Physique et Chimie of the city of Paris. His father was Henri Joliot, a merchant, and his mother was Emilie Roederer. In 1925 he became, at the Radium Institute, assistant to , whose daughter Iréne he married in 1926.…