Chemistry

DNA helix

Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2020: The Genetic Scissors

The 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has, for the first time, been shared by two female scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier from France and the American, Jennifer A. Doudna. They led separate teams to discoveries which resulted in the exciting new tool that cuts and pastes DNA and goes by the cryptic… Read More

Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2019

by Peter Ellis Mandatory Credit: Photo by Naina Helen Jama/TT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10439688a) A screen displays the portraits of the laureates of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (L-R) John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino ‘for the development of lithium-ion batteries’ during a news conference at the… Read More

The 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

The study of living organisms is biology, but the processes of life are carried out in cells by molecules. The study of those molecules and their reactions is a branch of chemistry called biochemistry. The 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to scientists who have speeded up evolution… Read More

Fritz Haber’s Nobel Prize

In the autumn of 1918 the First World War was at last approaching an end. In neutral Sweden the committee for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry met.  As in 1916 and 1917 they decided that there had been no discovery that “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” so did not… Read More

Chemical Anniversaries: Celebrating Nobel Prize Winners

The 2017 Nobel Prize winners will be announced tomorrow, so it is a good time to look back at some previous winners with particular anniversaries this year. One hundred years ago the First World War was into its fourth year. With most of the industrialised countries involved and the deaths… Read More

Chemical Anniversaries – 1817: 3 Elements

The discovery of a new chemical element is a rare event now. In fact, new elements are not discovered, they are made by smashing smaller nuclei of atoms together. The most recent new element to be recognised and named is Oganesson, atomic number 118. It is the new bottom member… Read More

Chemical Anniversaries: 1867 the birth of Marie Curie

Marie Curie is France’s most famous scientist and probably the most well-known female scientist in the world. Except she wasn’t French and Marie was not the name she given at her birth in 1867. She was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, now the capital of Poland, but Poland didn’t exist… Read More

Chemical Anniversaries: The Death of Michael Faraday, 1867

Michael Faraday. Source: see below. Michael Faraday, one of the UK’s greatest scientists, died in 1867 at the age of 76. That was at the peak of the Steam Age.  Railways linked cities, towns and many villages; steam engines powered factories and steamships crossed the oceans. The Electric Age… Read More