[HN Gopher] Nobel Prize Chemistry 2023
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Nobel Prize Chemistry 2023
Author : alberto_ol
Score : 93 points
Date : 2023-10-04 09:55 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nobelprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nobelprize.org)
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I knew Louis Brus during my Bell Labs stint 30+ years ago and am
| thrilled that he was recognized. Terrific human being and
| brilliant scientist.
| ChemSpider wrote:
| Anyone knows more about this "Nanocrystals Technology Inc., New
| York" company from Ekimov? I did a quick google search but could
| not find anything.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the
| Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E.
| Brus, Alexei I. Ekimov "for the discovery and synthesis of
| quantum dots"
| supergirl wrote:
| > quantum dots are semiconductor particles a few nanometres in
| size, having optical and electronic properties that differ from
| those of larger particles as a result of quantum mechanical
| effects (wikipedia)
|
| why chemistry and not physics? how do they draw the line?
| cushpush wrote:
| A quantum dot is like a prism made of electrons; the sizes can be
| adjusted so that the color emitted is different and their
| properties of semiconducting and so on are drastically different.
| "The discovery here is for actually purifying quantum effects to
| actually become materials you can touch."
| murphyslab wrote:
| Nice seeing them have what appear to be actual solutions of
| quantum dots in volumetric flasks, right on the panel's table.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpph2cHx6gk&ab_channel=Nobel...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Link with timestamp https://youtu.be/vpph2cHx6gk?t=220
|
| It's funny because it looks exactly like something you'd see in
| a stock photo of "chemistry."
|
| The usual reaction to that being "chemistry isn't flasks of
| brightly colored liquids, what are you doing?" But in this case
| it's finally appropriate.
| dekhn wrote:
| It looks like a stock photo, but colors that bright and pure
| at room temperature is not typical of a chemistry lab! They
| are quite lovely, IMHO, I absolutely love the spectral purity
| and brightness.
| murphyslab wrote:
| It depends a lot on what kind of chemistry lab one works
| in. Having worked at in fluorescence microscopy in my MSc,
| then at Canada's Nanotechnology Research Centre & at
| Xerox's Research Centre in Mississauga, and later working
| with liquid crystals at TU Eindhoven I've had the joy of
| seeing some incredible colour in the lab. There's so much
| information which can be encoded spectroscopically, which
| is one reason why nanoparticles make for such useful
| probes.
| elashri wrote:
| So the leak was correct! [1]
|
| But it is nice that development in quantum dots finally gets its
| share.
|
| [1] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/nobel-chemistry-prize-
| winner...
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| Given that only the living qualify for a Nobel prize,
|
| Given that leaks demonstrably occur,
|
| Given human nature,
|
| Given at most 3 can share a Nobel Prize,
|
| It is not a question of "if" but "when" eventually a fourth
| wheel scientist risks being assassinated if consideration of
| topics for a prize leaks substantially beforehand. Perpetrators
| could include candidates, but also nationalists (for prestige)
| of any rank (civilians, national security employees, ...).
|
| Perhaps a topic for a film school student? A bizarre cross
| between "Don't look up" and the French film "Le couperet", with
| elements of film noir.
|
| To make it extra bizarre, have the invention be resurrection
| technology.
|
| Defensive measures the Academy could take could include last
| minute randomized selection of the topic / breakthrough,
| probability weighted by dubious nature of death of deceased
| candidates. Although this risks an escalation where a candidate
| has larger numbers of random candidates for other discoveries
| or breakthroughs assassinated...
| jldugger wrote:
| > Given at most 3 can share a Nobel Prize,
|
| Proposed title of your spy thriller novel: The Four Body
| Problem.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| The four body problem? That's quite the mexican standoff
| gone wrong, if all four of them manage to kill eachother.
| notfried wrote:
| It was intended as a pun of "The Three Body Problem"
| novel, I would guess.
| tigerlily wrote:
| Four being the number of death and all...
| SweetestRug wrote:
| Very exciting, especially to see Moungi receive the Nobel. He is
| such a hardworking, humble, and honest person.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Tunisians all over the world are rejoicing haha. I don't know
| if he considers himself to be Tunisian, but we're all extremely
| proud of him nonetheless!
| cobrabyte wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but is it common for there to be a 30-year
| delay in awarding Nobel Prizes after discoveries are made by
| scientists?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| An important consideration is that Nobel prizes are for "great
| benefits to humankind", it usually means practical discoveries,
| and never theoretical work.
|
| The world becoming more and more complex, the time span between
| the theoretical framework and the first experiments to the
| realization of something genuinely useful tends to become
| longer and longer. There are some fields where, with the time
| to become an expert plus the time for the discovery to become
| Nobel-worthy, it may become difficult to get a Nobel in a
| lifetime (so, at all).
| aqme28 wrote:
| Theoretical work is still awarded, but only after
| experimental confirmation. Penrose for example
| cm2012 wrote:
| Yes because they want to award people before they die for a
| lifetime of work.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_prize
|
| > Recognition time lag
|
| > Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition
| of discoveries made "during the preceding year". Early on, the
| awards usually recognised recent discoveries. However, some of
| those early discoveries were later discredited. For example,
| Johannes Fibiger was awarded the 1926 Prize in Physiology or
| Medicine for his purported discovery of a parasite that caused
| cancer. To avoid repeating this embarrassment, the awards
| increasingly recognised scientific discoveries that had
| withstood the test of time. According to Ralf Pettersson,
| former chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or
| Medicine, "the criterion 'the previous year' is interpreted by
| the Nobel Assembly as the year when the full impact of the
| discovery has become evident."
|
| My own comment: Since there is a large queue of potential
| awardees, I suspect there is a preference for older scientists
| who might die soon since being alive is also a requirement for
| award.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Sometimes the importance of the original discovery only becomes
| clear over several decades. Quantum dots have been in
| development for various technological uses for a long time but
| there have been many breakthroughs in the past decade, e.g.
| (2017)
|
| https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/quantum-dot-first-for-ca...
|
| Pretty impressive stuff:
|
| > "The researchers used cadmium-selenium dots 3nm in diameter
| to seamlessly replace iridium and ruthenium catalysts in five
| different bond forming reactions including b-alkylation and
| b-aminoalkylation. What's more they needed orders of magnitude
| less catalyst than conventional metal ones. 'We were pleasantly
| surprised by the level of performance by just substituting,
| without any optimisation, a very simple quantum dot into these
| reactions,' says Krauss.
|
| > "The dots have some other advantages: they are easy to
| synthesise, cheap and 'you can tune the photophysical and redox
| properties of the catalyst just by changing the dots'
| dimension', Ceroni explains."
| Laremere wrote:
| As a sample because I can't answer your question more broadly:
| Peter Higgs proposed the Higgs boson nearly 50 years before
| winning the Nobel Prize. Just the theory without confirmation
| wasn't enough. Then when the LHC detected it, he (along with an
| LHC scientist) won the Prize basically immediately.
|
| Quantum dots have an increasing relevance to display
| technology, so it feels reasonable to look back and reward a
| discovery which was more important than it seemed at the time.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| the delay seems to vary, perhaps by when the discovery becomes
| widely applied?
|
| Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier had a much shorter
| delay, for example.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuelle_Charpentier
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