RIP Keith Fagnou - November 16, 2009
Chemists are mourning the loss of a bright young star of the field, Keith Fagnou, an organic chemist at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Fagnou died three days after being admitted to hospital with the H1N1 flu virus. He was 38 years old.
An announcement from the department of chemistry at the university reads “Professor Fagnou was an outstanding scientist, teacher, and mentor. He will be missed by all his colleagues and students as a leader, a teacher, a passionate scientist, and a good friend.”
Fagnou was researching the organic chemistry of carbon-hydrogen bonds in cyclic molecules called arenes, with the aim of making these catalytic reactions more efficient. Fagnou’s research was part of the green chemistry movement, which is trying to make chemical processes more sustainable. In 2003, Fagnou won the Polanyi prize, given by the province of Ontario in honour of Nobel laureate John Polanyi, who won the prize for chemistry in 1986.
The Ottawa Citizen uses Fagnou’s death to discuss how this strain of flu might hit young, seemingly healthy people more than seasonal flu – which tends to cause worst suffering in the elderly and very young.
Over at popular chemistry blog In the pipeline the question over the availability and production of vaccines in Canada is raised in the comments thread, although it is very unlikely that someone of Fagnou’s age and physical health would feel the need to be vaccinated. Extra poignancy is added when you take a look at the University of Ottawa’s swine flu advice page, which reads:
Due to the limited supply of the H1N1 flu vaccine, the University of Ottawa may be required to hold its campus vaccination clinic at a later date. The University is waiting on confirmation from Public Health Ottawa and will keep the community informed of all developments.
The latest CDC estimates, released late last week, suggest that the number of deaths from swine flu is greater than expected (Washington Post).
Fagnou is survived by his wife, who is a doctor, and their three young children. His PhD supervisor Mark Lautens from the university of Toronto told the Globe and Mail how Fagnou’s death is not only a tragic loss to his family and friends, but also to Canadian chemistry: “I think it's safe to say he was the most high-profile rising young star in chemistry in Canada.”


GlaxoSmithKline has announced a rosy set of third-quarter financial figures, and is going to be boosted by the ongoing H1N1 outbreak.
GlaxoSmithKline has been ordered to pay out $2.5 million in a lawsuit over birth defects allegedly associated with its antidepressant Paxil.
The
Last night Cambridge’s clown school gave the world’s best and brightest the awards they deserved. Harvard University hosted its
Pop, pop, fizz, fizz -- oh, what a release it is.
These blobs are images of the electron clouds around a carbon atom. There’s a radially symmetric blob, and a double-lobed blob with a node in the middle – just like the patterns of electron density that the s and p atomic orbitals give rise to.
The American Chemical Society’s
There were probably some champagne corks popping over at AstraZeneca this weekend as the company unveiled results showing its new drug for thinning blood performs better than one of the world’s current best sellers.
A former SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory researcher who allegedly destroyed $500,000 worth of protein crystals earlier this month was arrested and charged on Monday for willfully ruining government property.
GlaxoSmithKline is to expand its pilot programme offering cheaper drugs in poorer countries, according to its chief executive.
A new chemical element has been officially recognised by the world’s ruling chemists. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has asked discoverer Sigurd Hofmann to pick a name for ‘Element 112’.
The 
Count Lennart Bernadotte of didn’t quite make it to 100. He died in 2004 at the age of 95, but not before ensuring that his life’s great project had a future. Great grandson of King Oscar II who presented the first Nobel awards in Stockholm in 1901, Count Lennart launched, exactly sixty years ago, the Nobel Laureates Meeting in Lindau, a pretty but very provincial town on Lake Constance. The original aim of the weeklong meetings was to encourage isolated and struggling scientists and doctors in post-war Germany by bringing them into social contact with great living scientists from around the world.
New pharmaceutical company dark deeds are being alleged down under.
Would you
The historic home of chemist Joseph Priestley may soon close to the public due to budget cuts.
Posted for Declan Butler
After this week’s 
The US Food and Drug Administration has accused India-based drug manufacturer Ranbaxy of falsifying data in both approved and pending drug applications.
GlaxoSmithKline is to slash drug prices in the world’s poorest countries and reinvest profits made in less developed countries into hospitals and clinics, according to company chief executive Andrew Witty.
Celebrity-obsessed UK newspaper the Guardian has wheeled out its big-hitting serious journalists today for an expose of tax avoidance and ‘offshoring’. In some potentially morally dubious (but likely entirely legal) tax-related cleverness it seems AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline have shifted the ownership of some of their trademarks to low-tax countries.
I think I’m beginning to get RSI from typing the phrase “more woe in the pharmaceutical industry”.
Chemical company Dow has announced “a series of aggressive actions to accelerate its transformational strategy in light of current economic realities”. For those baffled by this new low in corporate speak: it is laying off thousands of employees after being credit crunched.
Solar panels seem like an obvious way to generate electricity on the cheap, but they are flawed in a number of ways. They’re pretty inefficient, and they need to be pointed right at the sun to take advantage of its rays.
The ‘mystery buyer’ waiting to pounce on biotech firm ImClone has been revealed as Eli Lilly.
The media feeding frenzy that is the
A grand jury in the US has indicted a man amid allegations he posed as a researcher to acquire a deadly toxin found in pufferfish.
The bricks are based on Japanese technology (
Posted for Katrina Charles,
Analysis of the armour of a ‘living fossil’ may help the military build better body armour, according to researchers from MIT.
The Creative Review has an 
Dextre, the Canadian space agency’s new robot, is meant to be helping construct the ISS. Instead it’s
Scientists have for the first time measured the force needed to move one individual atom.

The history of chocolate will have to be revised following a new discovery, along with the history of humanity’s troubled relationship with alcohol. Archaeologists working in Honduras detected residues from cacao plants in liquid holding vessels from 500 years earlier than beverages of the chocolate precursor have previously been found. John Henderson and colleagues think the beverages in question were more like beer than a hot chocolate-type drink and could have been as potent at 5% alcohol by volume (
A giant X-ray machine in Oxfordshire is going to peer inside unopened manuscripts too fragile to unfurl. Tim Wess from the University of Cardiff has worked out that X-rays from the