Muralee Murugesu is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Ottawa, and works on lanthanide nanoscale magnets in the field of molecular magnetic materials.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I like to make things with my hands; I realized that I could make new molecules crystallize, study and understand them. That is what made me become a chemist.

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

I always said to myself if my chemistry career fails then I would go to an island start a bicycle shop near a beach and repair bicycles for people. Island lifestyle! That would be a change for sure.

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

I am working on molecular magnetic materials, more specifically lanthanide Single-Molecule Magnets. I hope it will lead to practical application of these molecules in technologies such as hard disk and/or quantum computers.

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

Gandhi, I would like to know how he was able to achieve great things for the human society in a peaceful way.

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

A little over a year ago, I wanted to crystallize a difficult compound. I wish I could spend more time working in the lab.

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

There are so many books I would like to read but if I have to choose one then it would be “Le Rouge et le Noir” by Stendhal in French. For music probably Thriller form Jackson, to bring back my early teenage years.

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

Naoto Ishikawa, who has done some beautiful work on lanthanide phthalocyanine-based magnets. I would like to read his perspective evoked in these few questions.

Clemens Richert is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart, and works on functional nucleic acids. His group’s homepage can be found at https://chip.chemie.uni-stuttgart.de.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

The desire to get an education in a fundamental field of science that fascinates me. I was more drawn to chemistry than physics, probably because I liked synthesis better than mathematical approaches.

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

I like to build things, both on a molecular level and on a macroscopic level. I enjoy working with my group and do not actively think about other options, but I can well imagine being an entrepreneur in the (bio)tech area, making novel devices. For example, we are thinking about using the organic waste that a household produces and harvest enough energy-rich compounds from it to make the household independent of fossil fuels. If I was more patient, I would also like to teach autogenic training as a technique to overcome stress-related diseases.

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

My lab focuses on synthesis and molecular recognition. We have projects on enzyme-free replication, high fidelity diagnostics, and nanostructured materials. I hope we will find new ways to induce energy-rich organic compounds to drive spontaneous molecular evolution, and to develop devices that are based on molecular recognition and that include molecular machines. I also would like to be able to find highly specific ligands for biomacromolecules within days rather than years.

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

Linus Pauling or Richard Feynman. I have so many questions I would like to ask either of them.

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

I like to be in the lab and perform experiments. There is immense satisfaction in being able to synthesize a new compound with the desired properties in high yield. I go to the lab daily, but the last time I did a serious study with my own two hands was seven years ago. I measured the reactivity of active esters, using a mass spec-based approach (Synlett 2005, 411-416).

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

The book would be Ernest Hemingway: The old man and the sea. The album would be Dire Straits: Making Movies. I would prefer to take my guitar, though.

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

Peter Gölitz, editor of Angewandte Chemie. I wonder how he manages to deal with thousands of manuscripts per year and still remain an approachable human being.

Steven Benner directs the Westheimer Institute at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, and works at the interface between the physical sciences, informatics, natural history, and planetary science.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

As a child, I was a “rockhound”, and became familiar with the Periodic Table by way of the specimens that I collected. Also, like many young lads, I was a pyromaniac, and chemistry represents a socially acceptable redirection of this human trait. Of course, both traits (collecting rocks, burning things) date back to the Paleolithic in the human species (at least).

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

I would probably be a middle school science teacher. There is a huge need for people in this space, to motivate and educate students at a very critical time in their development.

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

Since I started the Westheimer Institute ten years ago, my lab has tried to do “big” things across disciplines, something difficult to do within standard academic structures. To pay the bills, we develop new kinds of DNA to diagnose diseases, use dynamic combinatorial chemistry to create small molecule therapeutic agents, and work to create new forms of life under the “synthetic biology” paradigm. We resurrect ancestral genes and proteins from now-extinct organisms to bring “the experimental method” to bear on hypotheses in natural history that might tell us more about terran life. We very much want to understand how to extract information from the huge volumes of error-ridden DNA sequences that NextGen sequencing is producing. As members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, we worry about how life began and how it might be distributed in the cosmos, including on Mars and Titan.

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

It is a common misperception that historical figures would be intrinsically interesting to have dinner with. Aristotle, Newton, Franklin or Einstein may have been brilliant (compared to us), but we modern day folks of modest intelligence are the cultural descendants of them all. Thus, any one of them would find modern college freshmen more fascinating than we would find them, especially if we showed them our iPads, and nearly all of the information flow over the dinner table would go from us to them. And it would be frustrating. For example, the entire evening with Aristotle could well be spent explaining why the water on the table was H2O.

So my choices would target ancestral technologies that we have lost. For example, when Cleopatra went to visit Julius Caesar, she carried a fresh rose from Egypt. We have lost the ability to preserve flowers in this way. I would love to meet the guy who knew how to do this 2000 years ago. Also, the recipe for Greek Fire is lost, despite its having kept Byzantium alive in the Middle Ages far past expectations given its geopolitical context. I would love to speak to the guy who knew how to make it. More pyromania, I suppose.

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

Last week, before I went to the ACS meeting. I took several sets of nmr spectra of a series of arsenate esters over a range of pHs and temperatures. The goal was to see if DNA having its phosphate esters replaced by arsenate linkages, too unstable to survive in most environments on Earth, might be stable in the subsurface oceans on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. There, the water-ammonia mixtures are cold, and the pH is high, both increasing the stability of arsenate esters.

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

Answers to these “If you were a tree, what tree would you be?” questions are less interesting than they seem at first glance. If I were stranded on a desert island, the book that I would want would be entitled “How to Survive on a Desert Island”. I would have taken the complete collection of Mozart Piano Concerti with me, only to discover that the sand on the desert island destroys CD players.

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

Christopher Switzer at the University of California at Riverside, Andrew Ellington at the University of Texas, Clemens Richert at the University of Stuttgart, or Joseph Piccirilli at the University of Chicago. They all have interesting visions of how chemistry might be directed towards “big” questions.

Katherine Haxton is in the School of Physical and Geographical Sciences at Keele University, and works on dendrimers and other advanced materials for catalysis and drug delivery.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I didn’t. I wanted to be a scientist, probably a particle physicist but I’m not really sure I knew what that was! I turned out to be particularly bad at classical mechanics, actually all 1st year university physics except the quantum stuff but fortunately was much better at chemistry so decided to stick to that. By the time I did my final year project on dendrimers, I was hooked.

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

A particle physicist, with things like the LHC that area of research sounds very exciting at the moment. For a non-science job I’d go for running a good wine shop and start importing Canadian wine to the UK.

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

We are working on new kinds of hybrid materials, combining dendrimers with other classes of materials, that will hopefully lead into a number of applications such as catalysis and drug delivery.

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

Someone like Marie Stopes or Emmeline Pankhurst. It would be quite fascinating to get their take on today’s women’s rights and issues, particularly those related to science.

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

A couple of weeks ago I had to run through an experiment for a first year teaching lab, a form of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction that oscillates through purple, red, blue and green. It’s very pretty and satisfying to see spontaneous colour changes like that.

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

Phillip Pulman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy – I think that could do with a couple more readings, and for an album, probably the Bach Cello Suites.

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

Some of the chemistry staff up in St Andrews would be good. Perhaps Russell Morris or David Cole-Hamilton? I’m curious about their desert island reading habits!