Nobel ‘06…Liveblog (?)
6:16 am: Forgive me, biopeople…I just can’t get excited about this one. I think it’s about time that chemistry is allowed to encroach on the physics prize to balance the encroachment of medicine and physiology into the chemistry prize. Good morning.
5:56 am: Roger Kornberg now has a one sentence entry on wikipedia. Am I the only person who didn’t know of this guy before today?
5:53 am: Roger Kornberg wins for transcription. The shoe-horning of biology into the chemistry prize continues.
12:11 am: The press conference will be broadcast live here. My interest is definitely going to jinx everyone assigned odds below. Bet the field.
9:57 pm EDT: It’s officially Chemistry Day in Sweden. Since I think there’s about a 1-in-8 chance that someone in this department will win the Prize, I’m going to stick around to see what happens. If someone here wins, I’ll grab my reporter hat and take pics and videos of the joyous event. Of course, everything will be posted for your entertainment. If Harvard’s dry spell in chemistry continues (the last Prize was in 1990 to Corey), I’ll slouch home and do my laundry.
As the comments point out, I’ve overlooked a number of achievements that could end up winning. They’ll eat into the hefty 1-1 odds given to the field when they’re added next year. As for this year, I think it’s safe to say that the online consensus is that Tsien and company stand the best chance of winning for GFP/fluorescent probes.
Explore posts in the same categories: Harvard, Chemistry, Blogs
October 4th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Good night, and good luck! You keep watch, I will join the bandwagon tomorrow morning.
October 4th, 2006 at 4:05 am
It is going to be JJ LaClair for his fluorescent probes!
October 4th, 2006 at 6:07 am
You are not alone. I did not know this guy until 5:49 today. Where could the chemistry guys go after so many biology Nobel winners in chemistry?
October 4th, 2006 at 6:23 am
So do I.
That doesnot meant he is nobel class.
October 4th, 2006 at 6:57 am
Yeah milkshake, I can see it now:
The 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is shared between JJ LaClair and Bengu Sezen for achievements in the art of NMR spectroscopy.
October 4th, 2006 at 7:25 am
I am bamboozled and am laughing all the way to the lab. I had never ever heard of Arthur Kornberg’s son before! Politics maybe?!
October 4th, 2006 at 7:30 am
On second thoughts, I better shut up for now. I don’t really know anything about this guy. But it’s amusing that none of the blogs I know ever noted his name.
October 4th, 2006 at 7:44 am
At what point does the Nobel Prize in Chemistry become absolutely irrelevant for actual chemists?!
(Unsurprisingly, the member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry who wrote the Advanced Reading for this Prize is a member of a Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics.)
October 4th, 2006 at 10:48 am
The committee was pretty heavy towards bio-stuff. I agree with most of the above - the guy’s work maybe sound but it is time for a prize for bio to be offered (similar to economics), to allow good ole fashioned chemistry to get some of the attention.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:43 am
The other problem is that chemistry is way too mundane to be worthy of an academic prize. Nobody will win a prize for figuring out how to make red dye less carcinogenic, or more brilliant, or less expensive. Ironically, that’s the price to pay for being the most important physical science. I mean seriously, look around your workspace — from the bleach composition used to make paper to the LEDs in your computer screen, is there anything that hasn’t been touched by chemistry?
Too bad academics don’t have enough balls to resign their prizes in protest.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:45 am
LCDs, sorry. But the Blue LED would be a totally worthy nobel prize. Unfortunately, it’s already pretty stale.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
I think, if anything, Kornberg’s work is undeniably chemistry. He used crystallography - a favorite technique of chemists for decades now - to elucidate the synthesis of a long-chain polymer. The synthesis of this long-chain polymer involves a large macromolecular assembly which contains various elements, some of which aid in regulation of the synthetic process, others are involved in the actual catalytic chemistry, and others are responsible for proper recognition of necessary reagents and/or the template for polymer synthesis. All of this happening in a more-or-less aqueous environment.
If that’s not chemistry - and challenging chemistry at that - I’m not sure what would qualify.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
The Nobel ought to be given for original ideas/work that provide the foundation for future scientific investigations. Kornberg’s work certainly qualifies if this is the definition used by the Committee this year.
There are plenty of things in good ole fashioned chemistry that are worthy of a Nobel, but there is presently a massive log-jam of fountainhead studies in biochemistry. I would suggest everyone sore about the frequency of bio-Nobels read a great essay by J.R. Platt (Science, 146, 347-353). It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
I don’t think it’s a question of whether the problems Kornberg tackled were inherently chemical — the bulk of biological research is chemical on some level.
Nor is the question whether his work was deserving of a Prize (I’m clearly not qualified to judge the merits of his research, but I trust the Nobel Committee wouldn’t have selected someone who had no business whatsoever being selected).
The question is whether the biological sciences, which are already recognized by a Medicine or Physiology Prize, should also be awarded *frequently* (3 of the last 4 years) with the Chemistry Prize. I mean, last time I checked, my Physiology is replete with eukaryotic cells that are transcripting away… amiright?
October 4th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
That’s what the Nobel Committee for Chemistry 2006 looks like:
Håkan Wennerström (Chairman)
Professor of Theoretical Physical Chemistry
Astrid Gräslund (Secretary)
Professor of Biophysics
Per Ahlberg (Member)
Professor of Organic Chemistry
Anders Liljas (Member)
Professor of Molecular Biophysics
Lars Thelander (Member)
Professor of Physiological Chemistry
Gunnar von Heijne (Member)
Professor of Biochemistry
No surprise that the prizes go to biostuff.
October 4th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Now, maybe it’s because I’m a biophysical chemist (which, I suspect, isn’t really considered to be a “proper” field of chemistry in some circles), but the physiology/medicine prize from my perspective is more for achievements at the cellular biology level and “up” in terms of size (organ systems, entire organisms, and sometimes even actual medical breakthroughs). Last year, it was awarded for an actual medical breakthrough on gastritis/peptic ulcers and how to treat them, a few years ago it was for medical imaging, and there have been recent Prizes for olfactory system research, organ development, and the like. It’s not appropriate - from what seems to be both my point of view and the Nobel Committee(s) - to be using that prize to recognize achievements for what is basically macromolecular chemistry.
I happen to think the most important thing about the Nobel Prizes is that it actually brings basic science into the news in a positive light, and doesn’t suffer from always falling into the “it’s either astronomy/planetary science, new health care/medical advances, or new electronic software or hardware” trap that so many news outlets propagate when publishing science/technology news.
I also facetiously ask - were we to go back in time 15 years, would we hear the griping that the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded for basically just an ingenious application of physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering, and not actually chemistry? (The 1991 laureate was, if you couldn’t guess by that description, Richard Ernst from ETH Zurich.)
October 4th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
As a biophysical chemist myself, I’m disappointed. Yes, Kornberg used crystallography, but a technique does not a discipline make. If his studies were on “ok, this residue performs general base catalysis, and if we mutate it then we lose catalytic efficiency and extension”, etc etc etc, that would be all fine and good. However, identifying the elements of a macromolecular complex is not chemistry, just as tracking migration patterns of swans is not chemistry (even though there are certainly chemical processes going on). As soon as you start looking at things from a *systems* approach, then you cross the line from chemsitry to biolgoy.
To a certain degree, at the interface, the distinction between chemistry and biology is a matter of attitude and approach; just as is the case between chemistry and physics.
October 4th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I should have been more thorough in my past posts.
“If his studies were on ‘ok, this residue performs general base catalysis, and if we mutate it then we lose catalytic efficiency and extension’, etc etc etc, that would be all fine and good.”
That is also part of what was learned - what residues are involved in translocation, what conformational processes influence nucleotide binding, how does the polymerase separate the hydrogen-bonded strands, what - at the atomic level - has to happen for elongation to occur, and the like. It wasn’t just crystallography - the crystal structures didn’t come out until the early part of this decade, his group had been working on the chemistry and biochemistry of transcription since the 1970s. The structural information was certainly important, but there was a significant amount of actual biochemical work done prior and in conjunction.
This is why I don’t find the awarding of the Nobel to Kornberg to be that much of a shock - the goal was a structural and mechanistic understanding of transcription, and not just a “black box” level of understanding with big globular shapes representing various elements.
(My apologies to Paul, this will be the last bit of blather from me on this. If I haven’t made my case by now, then I am not going to do so. Maybe I should get a blog of my own…)
October 4th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Userlame: there’s a key sentence in that article that pretty much explains it all: “We become ‘method-oriented’ instead of ‘problem-oriented.’” Much of chemistry is not a problem-oriented field. It appears that the problem-oriented epoch of chemistry occurred from around 1900-1960, when quantum mechanics was being developed and the ways in which we understood chemistry dramatically changed. Enormous advancements were being made in chemistry then, as they are in biochemistry now- biochemistry is still a growing field, while, for example, organic chemsitry, is a fairly mature field in comparison. So does that mean that organic chemistry should explored less? No, it means that the biggest advancements in organic chemistry today are based in method development- not the testing of a major hypothesis, but rather, the perfection of a method based on several minor hypotheses. Does this method, which Platt would describe as mundane, still win Nobels? It did last year, when Grubbs and Shrock won the Nobel in chemistry, which they rightly deserved.
I think what most organic/inorganic chemists object to is the fact that such accomplishments aren’t really acknowledged much- last year was kind of a shocker in that regard. Chemistry is, in general, a pretty mundane science. To tell people “look, we are perfecting catalysis” is far less appealing then telling someone “look, I discovered how RNA is transcribed from DNA.” And that’s what it boils down to, I think- discoveries are far more romantic than methodology. However, methodology has far more application than discovery- it is only when said discovery starts to be picked apart do its applications become meaningful. But when you start asking what has greater overall impact, is when you put down your logic and pick up your opinions.
Frankly I think both ideas should be recognized, but lately, it seems to be discovery-heavy (bio-heavy), and that is leaving chemists feel like their work is not useful or important, which is not true.
October 4th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
lefinq: The problem is not whether or not chemists feel like their work is not useful or important, but when the next generation of potential chemists feel like the work is not useful or important. When the University of Essex kills its chemistry department and shuttles the faculty to bio and physics, there’s trouble in the air.
Thank you Anonymous, that’s exactly how I feel (as a biochemist) — micro(nano?) physiology is still physiology. After all, Kornberg’s daddy won the prize for DNA replication in the medicine and psysiology category. Agere takes pride in stating that he failed undergraduate chemistry (or something like that). It’s sad that in the Biophysics class at my institution, it’s difficult to get the students to learn the pKas of amino acid residues are, or that there are postdocs in my lab who use protocols trying to pH a tris buffer to 6. When i had a phosphate effluent from an FPLC mixing in with a waste bucket containg zinc, they thought that protein was coming out and that I was wrecking the machine. It’s frustrating to me that the biologists I interact with maintain this superiority complex and largely feel that chemistry exists as a service to biology, and awarding chemsitry nobel prizes to biologists doesn’t help at all.
October 4th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
I am more of a bio guy. I admit I was also a little surprised that he won a chemistry prize, but it wasn’t totally unexpected. I had thought that he had a good chance of winning a Nobel prize and although I think it would have been more fitting to win a physiology or medicine prize, the work was biochemical and structural in nature. I was more surprised that he won it alone (and Bob Roeder was left out).
Come on. You guys thought GFP and RNAi might win a chemistry prize. Kornberg’s work is at least more chemical. Those who won for RNAi are geneticists! And Kornberg’s Ph.D is in chemistry! (So is Cech’s.)
I also thought that this year’s chemistry prize might go for the ribosome work. It turned out to be for transcription instead of translation.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
There was a mistake in my earlier post.
What I meant is ” That does not meant he is not nobel class”
October 5th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
To tell people “look, we are perfecting catalysis” is far less appealing then telling someone “look, I discovered how RNA is transcribed from DNA.”
To me, discovering RNA transcription from DNA means absolutely nothing and it is not romantic and appealing. That just sounds like mopping up some details of stuff we already know to use your own rhetoric. No one wins for perfecting catalysis. The catalytic system discovered in that case was the most beautiful and awesome thing to happen in a long time; even if you argue about who should get the credit.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:21 am
I imagine it is more difficult to choose three people who contributed the most to method-oriented research (such as perfecting a catalyst) because these things often proceed in small iterative steps. Contrast this with discovery. Isn’t it easier to determine who found something first?
Though not always…I saw someone confront John Walker (chem. 1997) at a conference this summer. I think he thought his boss should have won it too.
October 6th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
And let’s not forget Zewail’s solo prize, right userlame? I mean, how many people have a legitimate beef about not sharing *that* award?
October 16th, 2006 at 12:48 am
[…] The 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Roger Kornberg for eukaryotic transcription, something that most people would regard as biology. This touched off some agonizing about the Meaning of it All at Uncertain Principles, In the Pipeline, and Adventures in Ethics and Science. Paul Bracher even went so far as to suggest that chemists move in on the physics prize. […]