Interview with 2013 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Arieh Warshel on 6 December 2013, during the Nobel Week in Stockholm, Sweden.

Could you please explain your Nobel Prize awarded work for 13-14 year olds?

 Arieh Warshel: To explain to 13-14 year olds … I essentially try to give my lecture to my granddaughter who is maybe 14 and then I found out that I have to change a lot. There are several things to explain. First of all the idea which is very simple to any age that if you have a very very complex system, the best is to focus on the main part and not to, like if it is a picture, not to look on all the parts in the same details. For example in my lecture we try to, I am still working on it, but we have a cart in the forest and we try to focus on the cart and to have the forest with much less pixels, so this is the general idea of what one call multiscaling. When it comes to biology you have a complex protein and you want to understand how it works.

First of all you have to assume that you could deal with it, not to listen to people who say that it is too complex. Then you say: I want to understand how it works, like if you have a watch and the watch is already there and you want to understand how it works. You are first to think about it, which I think that a 13 year old boy or girl could understand, then you look on parts of it and try to figure out how they work when all the rest is not moving and then you try, after you understand this, to let the rest of it move and then you get a picture how it works. So it’s basically understanding how biological molecule works and to explain more you have to take given system like proteins that chop molecules and you want to understand why it works so fast. The main point is that it is very hard to do it without a computer so young people understand what is computer, but this is not to send text message but to actually model how things are working and when you model it you kind of understand it, it’s like simulator for flight training so you are going inside the protein and see how it works.

What brought you to science?

Arieh Warshel: I grew up in kibbutz and even going to university was considered quite different, because in the kibbutz at that time they want you to – and I don’t blame them – they want you first to return your share to work in the kibbutz so they did not encourage you to do what is called matriculation or anything else and I felt at some stage that I want to go to university, but it was mainly for the accomplishment without any clear pattern of what it would be. I read books, I read about Marie Curie and other, but there was no connection so after the army when I was accepted to the Technion I met a friend in the Technion yard and asked him what direction I should take and he says that I have a good eyesight and therefore I should go to chemistry. For me it was really studying and getting the highest grades, but I felt that eventually I would figure out which direction to go, so its not that I dreamt of solving some problems.

What were you doing when you got the message of being awarded the Nobel Prize?

Arieh Warshel: I was of course sleeping, It was two o’clock and my wife pick the phone and I said “It is too early, so it must be something else”, because I felt that the news conference should be at 12 and this was ten o’clock. Then I picked up the phone and I was very happy to hear the Swedish accent and then I heard in the background people that I know so I was very happy, though it takes very long time to internalize this so I didn’t to anything. I think that my wife did something like [waving with his arms[, but for me it took a while.

Who is your role model, and why?

Arieh Warshel: The question about having a role model, so again I just say it’s not going from young age, but there are a few people that I admire in science, very few and one of them is Ludwig Boltzmann that I hold in very high regards, regardless of the fact that he commited suicide at the end. He is the guy who kind of invented statistical mechanics, he is the guy who figureed out what is entropy while everybody else got it from the work of heat engines. He figured out how it works on molecular level and he had a lot of detract also, who claims that he is wrong. He did not necessarily influence his career, I don’t know if he got Nobel or not, but he was a very important professor and a very original thinker so I think I put him at the highest. He is in some respect a role model, like many times when I give seminars and I try to explain how enzyme work and how they do not work, I put his photo as example of at which direction you have to look. He is buried in Trieste and essentially I heard that is good. When I teach chemistry, I force the students to draw his picture for one point, so I have a role model.

At what point did you realize your work was a breakthrough?

Arieh Warshel: One time was when the work on protein folding. The question is how protein could fold to one structure instead of many structures. When this worked, it was something that was declared as a major problem, though to me it was not such a big deal or puzzle, but it was clearly something impressive. The other part which I consider more important, like understanding how enzymes works, figuring out how to model enzymes. I felt this is breakthrough when it was done, but it was not necessarily shared by the referees or the community, so there is this gap between me thinking that’s something important to asking whether it will make impression. I had quite many problems that I was extremely happy to solve, then of course unhappy from the response of the referees, but overall there were several major accomplishments that I felt this is nice.

How do you find being a Nobel Laureate?

Arieh Warshel: Obviously, I am very happy. I was told by other Laureates that this should be the nicest week in my life, at present it does not look like this because of too much stress from interviews, not yours. I am sure that it happens to others, but it must eventually well out and you’re left only with the nice memories, so I am really looking forward for the rest of the week. I have many friends here so we will be very happy to see them.

Watch the interview

Did you find any typos in this text? We would appreciate your assistance in identifying any errors and to let us know. Thank you for taking the time to report the errors by sending us an e-mail.