Nobel science minds 2010

I think my impatience helps me to write science. For instance, I am not going to wait until a Filipino scientist wins the Nobel for the Filipino public in general to appreciate the work that are celebrated by these awards. Through the years, I have listened to enough Filipino scientists jokingly (or maybe only half-jokingly) tell me why they deserve to win the Nobel. It is not my business to encourage scientists to appreciate the work of scientists. My job is to help ensure that scientists, wherever they were born or raised, have an audience outside their peers.

Tomorrow, Dec 10, the Nobel awards will be formally given. The Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry medicine, literature and peace have been awarded to individuals for their achievements in these respective fields. The Nobel for Economics only started to be given in 1968. For 110 years now, the Nobel awards have distilled for us in some way, discoveries that are so fundamental or so important that we look back and find cultures, including ours, banking on it as a vehicle that moved them forward. This year’s Nobel in physics, chemistry and medicine are brought to you by the carbon atom and cells dating in test tubes.

The Nobel Prize for physics goes to Andre Geim of the University of Manchester, UK and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester, UK “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.”  

While 3-D is the big thing in films now, 2-D is a breakthrough when it comes to carbon. Graphene is a carbon layer so thin that it is only an atom thick. It has no height. If you need to imagine it, think of interconnected beehive compartments a meter high, then shrink it down to negative ten power of ten. It is flat. The two scientists devised experiments to extract this material which of course existed before this discovery, but has never been stripped from thicker carbon materials like graphite. How did they strip it? Inspired by the tiny suction structures in geckos, they made a tape that was delicate but ultra sticky and used that. So what if it is the thinnest? When “carbon” occurs in the same phrase as “thinnest,” we, who live through our cellphones and mobile computers, should pay attention. Carbon can be made into a transistor which means it switches and amplifies electronic signals. Ultra-thin transistors may, in the worlds of the future, include devices even much smaller since they could make possible roll-up screens, computers, phones, to dream up only a few. What is more is that graphene is 98 percent transparent. It is superhero material so strong yet so flimsy, so light but so dense that not even helium atoms (the smallest gas atom) can go through. Hmm, does this mean I can theoretically roll up graphene, fill it with helium, seal it and have a balloon that will always stay afloat?  

Carbon was the favored atom for the Nobel science prizes this year. The Nobel Prize for chemistry went to Richard F. Heck (he is now retired and lives here in the Philippines) of the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA, Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA, and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan “for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.” Why is this such a breakthrough? In the 80s, scientists discovered a marine organism that had such a great potential to be an anti-cancer drug. These organisms were not exactly like algae which were abundant so for scientists to study them, they had to “synthesize” them which is another way of saying that they would replicate them in their labs. In order this to happen, its carbon atoms would have to bind with other carbon atoms from other molecules. The trouble with carbon atoms is that once they have been sufficiently bound with other atoms, they do not readily react to other atoms, even other carbon atoms. The Nobel scientists discovered that palladium, another atom, could be sort of the “matchmaker” or in lab terms, a “catalyst.” When they made separate molecules meet in palladium, carbon atoms started getting interested in each other and hooking up. This was possible before with other processes except that they ended up with many unwanted by-products. Palladium is a “decent” matchmaker, it provides the venue where the carbon atoms will be close enough to want to hook up but palladium itself never gets involved in the process or again in lab terms, it does not get “consumed.” This Nobel-winning work had its beginnings since the 50s and developed till the 70s, contributing to many applications, not the least of them is the development of anti-cancer and anti-viral drugs and antibiotics.

The Nobel for Medicine this year went to British physician Robert G. Edwards for the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF). To date, four million births have happened because of IVF. This is human ingenuity taking over what nature failed to do in order to help infertile couples. IVF involves the extraction of sperm and egg from donors and joining them outside the womb and having the embryo implanted in the womb. The first test tube baby, Louise, was born in 1978 and she herself became a mom a few years ago. The fear of critics then about IVF was that it was going to make baby factories of women. That has not happened and IVF continues to provide hope to many couples.

This year’s Nobel was brought to you by carbon and by the sperm and egg finding another way to meet, occurring in the minds of these brilliant wonderfully persevering individuals who banked on science to give us hope that understanding could make us better humans.

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