Dave Winkler is at CSIRO Materials Science & Engineering in Clayton, Australia, and works on theoretical and computational chemistry and complex systems science.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I was always fascinated with how things worked, deciphering their components and interactions that produce an emergent system behaviour or property. I had a home chemistry lab behind the garage when I was young.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Tough choice, but probably a psychoanalyst or medical specialist. The human body, particularly the human mind, is so incredibly complex there are more than enough great problems for study for the foreseeable future.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

Two main areas: understanding the molecular basis for control of stem cell fate and design of small molecules that achieve this; modelling the properties (especially biological effects) of nanomaterials and materials more generally to allow design, optimization and safety.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Having read Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything I realise that some of the scientific greats may not have been good dinner conversationalists. I would choose Leonardo da Vinci because of his brilliant mind a breadth of his scientific and artistic interests.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

I do computational experiments every day. The last time I was in an experimental lab was to learn to culture embryonic stem cells, about four years ago.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

Excluding obvious must have books like the Bible, I would choose Caravans by James A Mitchener (one of the great travel sagas), or collected works of Tolstoy. For music either a great blues compilation, or Mozart.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

George Whitesides, I love the way he thinks so laterally, and the broad range of areas of chemistry he has contributed to.

Anders Østergaard Madsen is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, and works on crystal engineering using crystallographic techniques and computational approaches in the study of polymorphic molecular crystals.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

It was not until my final high school year that I realized science was more interesting than art and literature. In fact, I did not fully understand chemistry in high school, and this annoyed me so much that I fought courageously to understand it. Do I understand chemistry today? Only vaguely – there are, fortunately, still vast amounts of uncharted territory to explore.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I would be physician; I admire these people who every day take responsibility for the health and life of other people.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I am studying the stability and formation of polymorphic molecular crystals. Understanding the mechanisms behind the self-assembly and stability of solid-state materials at the molecular level is fundamental research – but with wide applications for design and manufacture of materials.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

There are so many! To mention one, I would like to have dinner with Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) – a Danish astronomer, and a leading figure of the scientific revolution. Tycho Brahe is credited with the most accurate astronomical observations of his time, and his data were used by Johannes Kepler, to derive the laws of planetary motion, one of the foundations for Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.

I have spent many holidays on the island Hven, where Tycho Brahe made his famous astronomical observations. Tycho was a very colorful person himself, and lived in a very important flourishing period of Danish history.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

The last thing I did in the lab was to perform a very meticulous X-ray diffraction single crystal measurement. I like to do very precise and redundant measurements. A saying goes that “Theory is a good thing, but a good experiment lasts forever!”

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

I might stay for a long time on that desert island, so I have to bring something that will keep me thinking …. The collected works of Søren Kirkegaard would do. And a Bob Dylan music album… Blonde on Blonde (1966), thank you!

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

I have had the opportunity to collaborate with Professor David Eisenberg from UCLA. He is a very inspiring person with a knowledge that reaches far beyond chemistry. I am sure he would give some very interesting answers.

David Lindsay is in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, UK, and works on the synthesis, structure and reactivity of N-heterocyclic carbene-main group complexes, with a particular interest in developing main group-NHC complexes for new applications in organic synthesis.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I enjoyed organic chemistry at school. I liked the order in the subject; the homologous series of alkanes and alkenes, the nomenclature for different functional groups, the way you could represent molecules on paper. I was fascinated by the power organic chemistry gave you to create new molecules. And I had brilliant teachers – they gave me the freedom to explore the subject, they answered every question I had and were always encouraging.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I would probably like to be a sports scientist and endurance sports coach. That way I would still be able to do research, indulge my inner geek in the scientific aspects of performance, and contribute to the growth and development of those I coached, and share in their successes – essentially, all the best aspects of an academic job.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

My research is focussed on the field of N-heterocyclic carbene complexes of main group elements; mostly boron at the moment. I hope the research will lead in many different directions, including using the complexes as catalysts, and maybe even in medicine. However, in such a new and relatively unexplored field, fundamental structure and reactivity studies are also very important, and we hope to make a contribution here as well.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

I think the 1965 Nobel Prize dinner would have been fun – RB Woodward and Richard Feynman were both fascinating characters. But I think I would choose Richard Feynman if I could have only one guest.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

I work in the lab a lot these days. The last reaction I did was the synthesis of an imidazolium salt, which will be used to form an NHC-borane complex.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

Music album would be “The First Circle” by the Pat Metheny Group. Once you get past the comedy first track, it’s a brilliant album which loosely falls into the jazz category. The book I would take is “Underworld” by Don DeLillo. It’s a tour through American history from the beginning of the cold war to end of the 20th century, told through a mix of fictional and fictionalised historical characters, and their reaction to events like the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy’s assassination. If I could cheat and have two books, I’d take also take “Earthly Powers” by Anthony Burgess.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Kevin Booker-Milburn, one of my old colleagues at Bristol, just to see him struggle to reduce his music collection down to one album.

Calcium is one of the most abundant elements on Earth. It plays various roles in many organisms, whether for the contraction of muscle cells, preserving potential differences across membranes, as a co-factor for some enzymes, or a component of bones and shells, to name a few.

Yet, it is surprisingly scarce in the upper atmosphere. Why could that be? Don’t anxiously skip to the end of this post for the answer… this scarcity remains unexplained for now. In this month’s ‘in your element’ article (subscription required) John Plane, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Leeds, ponders on this mystery.

All of the calcium that is present in the upper atmosphere has actually been brought there by interplanetary dust particles entering the Earth’s atmosphere, in a process called ‘meteoric ablation’. The intriguing data is that the concentration of calcium is much lower than expected — about 200 times lower than that of sodium for example, whereas they are present in roughly the same concentrations in the Earth’s crust. Check out the article to find out how scientists measure metal concentrations in the atmosphere.

Could the interplanetary dust particles be depleted in calcium before they even come in contact with our atmosphere? Could it be that more volatile elements (such as sodium) get ablated from the meteorites much more easily than calcium? Or an effect of a peculiar atmospheric reactivity for calcium? Plane explains how some of these reasons are valid, but only to some extent — and so the depletion in calcium has not yet been entirely accounted for.

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)

Philippe C. Hiberty is in the Department of Chemisty at Université de Paris-Sud, and works on method development and applications of valence bond theory

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

As a student, I was fascinated by quantum mechanics and especially the electronic structure of atoms and molecules. I followed the lectures of Professor Lionel Salem, who was a fantastic teacher, and from then on my dream was to enter his lab and do theoretical research.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be and why?

I sure would be a motorcycle mechanic, or even better I would work in a motor development department. Opening a motor, finding what’s wrong, tuning it, is as creative as doing research.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I am working on specific applications where valence bond theory can give insight while molecular orbital theory cannot. I do hope that this will lead to better understanding of chemical reactions and molecular interactions, and especially I hope to convince the chemists that both theories are complementary rather than rival.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

President Barack Obama, for sure. Not because he is supposed to be the most powerful man in the world — he certainly is not. But he is a true visionary, and he has restored the picture of United States that we, the French, are attached to: a country of tolerance, intelligence, freedom and progress.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

My last experiment dates back to the times when I was a student. I was such a terrible experimentalist that it is better for everyone’s security that I became a theoretician.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

Book: « A la recherche du Soi » (In search of the Self) by Arnaud Desjardins.

Music album: Sonatas and Partitas for violin of J.S. Bach (including the celebrated Chaconne), played by Hilary Hahn

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Roald Hoffmann. He has beautifully demonstrated the importance of quantum mechanics in chemistry, and he tremendously helped our understanding of chemical reactions and molecular structure by means of simple models. And those who know him personally know that he is even much more than a great chemist.

JJ Vittal is in the Department of Chemistry at the National University of Singapore, and works on solid state and materials chemistry.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I was introduced to chemistry by accident. My older brother advised me to take chemistry as my major for my bachelor’s degree so that I could get a job in his chemical company. However, I was overqualified when I applied to his company after I had obtained my MSc in chemistry. When I was at a different job interview I was advised to do PhD when they came to know that I was offered admission at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and I had no choice but to take it!

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I was very much interested and good at mathematics during my school days. Probably I would have been a math teacher in one of the schools in India or a bank employee.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

We are working on various aspects of solid state chemistry and materials chemistry. Currently, we are investigating some interesting solid state reactivities of metallomacrocycles and coordination polymers. Unexpected, unusual and unpredictable results always excite researchers. We hope that these studies will throw more light into the basic understanding on how an atom and a group of atoms in the solids respond to external stimuli during structural transformation.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

I wish to dine with the great Indian mathematical legend Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar (1887-1920). Originally I had known that he was a mathematical genius, but I learned a lot about him when I read the book The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel. Ramanujan lived indeed his life in mathematics and for mathematics. He was also a strict vegetarian, a diet which I have no problem with!

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

I usually check the crystals grown by my students. I do solve and refine crystal structures on a regular basis. I used to collect the crystallographic data but not anymore! Last time I really did something in the wet lab was about 14 years ago when my undergraduate student didn’t know how to synthesize (Ph₄P)[Co(SC{O}Ph)₃] and isolate the product.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

I don’t want to do any serious reading in a deserted island! I read the famous historical Tamil novel Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki long time ago. I would be happy to read this again, which is about the story of Rajaraja Chola, one of the greatest kings of the Chola Dynasty in South India. I love to listen to 70’s and 80’s Tamil and Hindi songs as well as English pop music. Taking just one music album may not be possible. If you insist, I would be happy to take Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

I would suggest Prof. Richard J. Puddephatt who is an outstanding and wonderful organometallic chemist. For the past 10 years or so he has turned his attention to supramolecular chemistry and crystal engineering. I know Dick well and he has been a long time collaborator. I would like to hear his views on some of these questions posed here.

Nicholas P. Deifel is a Visiting Professor the Department of Chemistry at Washington College in Chestertown, MD and works on applying crystal engineering to actinide containing hybrid materials.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Fireworks drove me to study chemistry. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I was exposed to local Zambelli fireworks shows over the three rivers. The exciting combinations of colors and explosions intrigued me at a young age; when I later discovered the source of these colors were metal salts I was hooked on chemistry. My love and excitement for the sciences was further crystallized through the efforts several awesome high school teachers.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

If I could go back in time and put as many years into music as I’ve put into chemistry, I’d play banjo in a blue grass band. I love bluegrass.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I’ve been working on synthesizing several families of uranium containing materials. While the initial characterizations of these materials are complete, we’ve been lucky to pair with researchers at UC Davis, Argonne National Lab and Los Alamos National lab to look at their thermochemical and electronic properties. I hope that thermochemical data (specifically the formation enthalpies) of structurally related uranium-bearing materials will be beneficial to future discussions in areas such as waste stewardship.

In addition to experimental work, I’m busy teaching an academically diverse group undergraduate students at a small liberal arts school. They are both traditional students of chemistry and nontraditional – political science and English majors. Perhaps a bit sappy, but I hope my efforts in teaching these scientists and non-scientists lead to graduates who smartly question the practices of today and are ready to tackle the problems of tomorrow.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Since college, I’ve been interested in both travelling and the history of the Silk Road. That said, I’d like to have dinner with Ibn Battuta, a 14th century traveler who spent over twenty years of his life discovering the far reaches of Africa and Asia. I’m impressed with the fortitude it must have taken to leave ones family and home to engage in such extensive travel in the 1300’s. Perhaps he’d have some words of wisdom to offer as I endeavor to quench my own wanderlust.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

Last Tuesday I monitored 12 simple distillations for my organic chemistry lab sections. Though I’ve done this experiment many times, it is still very cool to see the excitement each student feels when the first few drops of distillate hit their receiving flask.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

I’m a huge sci-fi nerd, so the first half of this is easy. I’d bring “The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide”, by Douglass Adams. Technically it is a collection of the first five books in the series, but I’ll assume your lawyers will allow this. Choosing one album is difficult, but it would have to be something soulful like Otis Redding’s “The Dock of the Bay.”

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

I would like to see Dr. Ahmed Zewail interviewed by Nature Chemistry, though Reactions is likely not the forum for this. I think Dr. Zewail may become the second chemist to win a Nobel Peace Prize after first winning one in Chemistry.

Anna I. Krylov is in the Department of Chemistry at University of Southern California, and works on electronic structure and spectroscopy of electronically-excited and open-shell species.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

As a child, I read several books about scientists and inventors (Marie Curie, Robert Wood, Bell, Paster, Koch, etc), and I was taken away by their world of everyday intellectual adventure and excitement of trying to solve puzzles of Nature. It was very different from the adult world around me where people regarded their jobs as a drag and counted hours left till a weekend and days left till a vacation. I wanted to be part of that other world. I liked all science subjects. I first wanted to a geologist (travel and wild outdoor life), then I read a book on biology that had scanning electron microscope images of cells, and decided to become a biologist, then I wanted to be a physicist cleaning spectrometers with cats and exposing dishonest boarding house operators using atomic flame tests (like Wood), but somehow chemistry took over. I think I really got excited about chemistry as I was experimenting in my home-made lab (stocked with not an entirely safe selection of chemicals that went beyond a chemistry set I cajoled my parents to get for me). I really loved explosions and mischief — like sodium in a toilet or nitrogen triiodide in the teachers lounge (almost got kicked out of school for this one). And then of course colors and smells (stink bombs are fun too!) and precipitates — it was like magic!

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Hmm, I dunno. I guess any job involving scientific research would be fun. Physics, biology, astronomy, engineering — it’s all good…

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I am getting increasingly drawn into biological problems. Currently, I am obsessing about fluorescent proteins (from the green fluorescent protein family — yes, this yucky stuff from a jelly fish). I am fascinated by their rich photo-physics and at the moment I am just trying to understand how do they work on the atomic level (if you want to learn more — check out our recent feature article in Acc. Chem. Res. DOI:10.1021/ar2001556). I hope that eventually we will be able to transition from understanding to engineering, that is, to use what we learned to solve important practical problems, like developing better genetically-encoded labels for 3D in vivo imaging or employing fluorescent proteins in photodynamic therapies.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Richard Feynman. He is so sharp and so funny!

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

My lab is my computer cluster — I do virtual chemistry most of the time. Two weeks ago I was looking at IrBr_n^– clusters (a request from a collaborator) — our goal was to understand their electronically excited states. Turns out, they are very, very tricky ;). The last real chemistry experiment was, I think, an overpressure explosion in a General Chemistry class last spring — liquid nitrogen in a cola bottle — ummmm, very, very loud!!! One of my favorites.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

Book: “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”. Music: an album by “Neschastnii Sluchai”, my favorite band.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

My colleague Curt Wittig. You will know why when you get his answers.

Huaqiang Zeng is in the Department of Chemistry at National University of Singapore (NUS), and works on the applications of broadly defined, bioinspired supramolecular chemistry into both chemistry and biology.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Chemistry has been my most favorite subject in high school due to my natural interest in science. The wonderful chemistry experiments conducted in my high school time slowly lured me into the splendid world of chemistry. When I started going to college, I knew that I wanted to study chemistry and to become a chemist someday.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Government officer who has the power to transform the society not into “Utopia” type, which is unlikely to realize, but at least into a one that is free of poverty and hunger while providing more opportunities or according more status to the more capable, regardless of races and genders, on the fairness basis.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

The major emphasis is placed on realizing synthetic ion channels capable of transporting ions across the lipid membrane in a highly selective fashion. Priorities are given to (1) mimic and recapitulate nature’s almighty ability to hormonally combine high ion selectivity into rapid ion conduction using simplified chemical systems that have not been made possible yet and (2) devise general and reliable strategies for synthetic ion channels and pores easily tunable toward binding and differentiating various ions (and other molecular species in the future) so that we don’t simply stop at the frontiers defined by nature. The ability to do so will lead to diverse interesting applications.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Albert Einstein, one of the world’s greatest minds. I have wanted to know his thoughts behind all those great theories and to get infected by his utmost courage and determination during “the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light”. A spiritually contagious dialog with him during the dinner shall greatly encourage me to continue venturing into the unknown world of chemistry as a pathfinder and to deal with all the uncertainties that come with it.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

I can hardly remember, but it must be biology-related one because I always completed the synthesis of target molecules first, followed by biological applications, and because I worked until my last day with Prof Peter G. Schultz at The Scripps Research Institute, it must be around the end of June of 2006, a time I left TSRI and headed to NUS to take up my current post as an Assistant Professor.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

Being a chemist is great in that one’s knowledge-based imaginations can be physically tested, and can sometimes solve perplexing enigmas. So, rather than a book and a music album, I would love to take with me a set of laboratory apparatus (hotplate stirrer, magnetic bar, rotary evaporator, etc).

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

In balance, I will choose Professor Samuel Gellman from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a genuine scholarly man of integrity. I met him once in the conference held in France, talked to him for a short time and was deeply impressed by his scholarly spirit, humble attitude and true love of great sciences of not only his but also others.

This month in his ‘in your element’ piece (subscription required) Dante Gatteschi from the University of Florence and the European Institute of Molecular Magnetism describes dysprosium in the same way as love was in La Traviata: “croce e delizia” (a curse and a blessing).

Compounds of rare-earth metals are so similar to each other that it was very tricky to separate, isolate, and identify new rare-earth elements. But Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran persevered, and when he finally isolated element 66 from its oxide through a time-consuming and multi-step separation he also came up with a most suitable name — from the Greek dys, ‘hard’ and prositos, ‘to get at’. Despite much subsequent research, including in Luigi Rolla’s lab in Florence, dysprosium remained hard to isolate in pure form until the 1950s, when ion exchange techniques came along to facilitate things.

Their diffuse 4f orbitals are mainly responsible for the properties of rare-earth elements — in particular, in some cases, compounds can show magnetic anisotropy. This is an intriguing property that continues to impart dysprosium with some exotic applications. An alloy of dysprosium with iron and terbium will, for example, change size in a varying magnetic field.

Read the article to get a first-hand account on how Dante Gatteschi and his group — some 60 years after Florence had seen much research on rare-earth separations — investigated these magnetic properties to find surprising bulk magnet and single-molecule magnet species. No delizia without croce though, because this story does involve quantum mechanical studies to try and understand these electronic and magnetic behaviours…

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)