Ever since it became clear that vitamins in food play an essential role in maintaining health and preventing diseases, these nutrients found themselves the subject of intense scrutiny by scientists eager to identify the active components and their chemical make-up. The 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewarded Walter Haworth and Paul Karrer for their individual…

There’s more to chlorophyll than simply providing plant leaves with their natural green colouring. Chlorophyll is part of the engine that drives photosynthesis, possibly the most important reaction on earth, in which light is absorbed from the sun and converted into chemical energy to fuel the growth of plants. Our understanding of the chemistry of…

A central theme of organic chemistry is the desire to understand important biological processes through discovering and imitating the manner in which Nature constructs its key substances from their basic chemical elements. Constructing artificial versions of natural products from its chemical building blocks traditionally involved a large degree of trial and error, and consequently the…

For centuries, philosophers, writers and musicians have all mused upon the differences between the sexes, but to scientists this can be largely explained by the actions of a variety of chemical messengers, or sex hormones, that influence the development of masculine or feminine characteristics. Very little was known about the origin of these sex hormones…

Sometimes the old gives rise to the new in wonderfully unexpected ways. Such was the case with graphene: an entirely new form of carbon, the world’s first 2-dimensional material and the subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. This novel wonder material, which offers possibilities ranging from faster computers to new insights into quantum…