Author Archives: Anne Pichon

Reactions: Marshall Brennan

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Marshall Brennan is an Associate Editor for Nature Chemistry. He blogs at Colorblind Chemistry and goes on Twitter by @Organometallica.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

The path that brought me to chemistry is a little unusual. I actually began my undergraduate studies in journalism, not chemistry—it wasn’t until I found myself a little bored of the curriculum about halfway through my first year that I decided to focus on a science. I initially switched into chemistry to try and con my way into the physics department, but once I started in on general chemistry, I was hooked. I especially love the subtle logic of working out reaction mechanisms and understanding how molecular geometry influences macroscopic properties. Once I started in on chemistry, I never looked back!

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

I have often thought that, if I had to do it all again, I would be part of a natural products isolation group. I imagine the job isn’t as glamorous as I think it is, but the idea of spending summers diving in coral reefs and winters running purifications is wildly romantic to me.

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

Well, I suppose I’m just getting started here at Nature Chemistry, so there’s a lot of uncharted territory for me. I’m looking forward to seeing what exciting new research the chemistry community has in store for me!

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

This is the question I have come back to the most times in the course of this interview. At long last, I have to go ahead and default to my favorite historical chemist, Sir Edward Frankland. While relatively unknown, he made so many critical contributions to early bonding theory and synthetic organometallic chemistry. More importantly, his descriptions of his laboratory hijinks are a hilarious read and I would be delighted to use my time machine to hear about them directly.

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

It was just a few weeks ago—I was running screens to develop new C–C bond activation reactions. The work is somewhat tedious, but very rewarding. Being able to describe a new bond-forming reaction that no one has observed before is its own sort of thrill!

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

Tricky question! The music album is straightforward—I would have to go with “Your New Favourite Band” by The Hives. As for the book, that’s the tougher part… I might have to cheat a little and go with Franz Kafka’s collection of short stories. Kafka wrote some really chilling stories that seem more cerebral every time I read them, so that might help with preventing boredom on the desert island.

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

I would whole-heartedly recommend Prof. Gregory Girolami—in addition to carrying out some truly fascinating research, he’s a bona fide historian of chemistry and I have yet to have a conversation with him that isn’t captivating.

Crystal clear data

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A change in one of our publication policies had been brewing for a while at the journal — and I’m happy to say that it has now been implemented: we have updated our requirements regarding the crystallographic characterization of small molecules. This is reflected in our guide to authors.

Until now we had been asking authors to provide a standard crystallographic information file (CIF) for each new structure characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis. This file doesn’t represent the complete story though; other experimental and refinement information such as the structure factors (HKL or FCF files) and RES files also exist.

A few years ago, in an article on their website entitled ‘Publication standards for crystal structures’, the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) recommended that for each newly determined structure, not only should the CIF file be provided, but also the corresponding structure-factor information — this has long been a requirement for the IUCr’s own journals. The structure factors are important for the structure determination and so should be available during the peer-review process, and may also be used by readers interested in the refinement of the structure once the paper has been published.

Endorsing this stance, the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) has enabled the deposition of structure factors together with the main CIFs, and has also been making crystallographic information increasingly easy to access. One now only needs to be armed with a CCDC number, a CSD code, or the DOI of the paper in which the structure was reported, to acquire the desired crystallographic details (through https://summary.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/structure-summary-form).

We’re happy to have now adopted this practice. We are asking that manuscripts reporting new crystal structures be accompanied by CIF files and associated information about structure factors.

The best — or easiest — way to do so is to use an up-to-date version of SHELXL (2014 or later) which now embeds the HKL and RES files into the generated CIF (other programs may also do this, I’m not sure). If another program has been used, then the CIF and the structure-factor file (in HKL and/or FCF format) can be handled as two separate files.

Our other requirements haven’t changed; we’re still asking that an ORTEP-style illustration of the structure, with probability ellipsoids, appears in the main Supplementary Information. And CIF files — including structure factors — should be run through the IUCr’s free online CheckCIF routine, the output submitted with the manuscript files (these are just used during the reviewing process, we don’t host them with the published paper), and any A- or B-level alerts that come up be explained in the Supplementary Information file.

In due course we host all this crystallographic raw data with the Supplementary Information of the associated paper — see, for example, this recent paper (Nature Chemistry, 6, 1079–1083 (2014) here) — and hope that it proves useful to the crystallographic community.

More on gadolinium

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Note: Posted on behalf of Pekka Pyykkö, who wrote about gadolinium in our August issue‘s In Your Element article. This post comes in complement to the IYE essay – and is best read after the article. Coincidentally, there is a bit of a connection between Pekka Pyykkö and the discoverer of the rare earths: Pekka’s former position, as Professor of Chemistry, was split off as ‘the parallel chair of chemistry’ in 1908 from Gadolin’s chair of chemistry, which had been established in 1761 at the Royal Academy of Turku (Kungliga Åbo Akademi) in Finland and had been moved to Helsinki in 1828.
– Anne.

Etymology of the name ‘gadolinium’

This new ‘earth’ was first referred to by Marignac with the provisional name of ‘Y α’ (ref. S1). In 1886, it is Boisbaudran who suggested the name of ‘gadolinium, symbol Gd’, noting that Marignac has accepted the choiceS2. Circumstantial evidence from the parallel case of samarium, from the mineral samarskite, from the person Samarskii, suggests that Boisbaudran in that case thought of both the mineral and the man: “je propose le nom de samarium (symbole = Sm) dérivé de la racine qui a déjà servi à former le mot samarskite” (I suggest the name samarium (symbol Sm), from the root that has already served to form the word samarskite)S3. The exact reference for the mineral name ‘gadolinite’ is not available, but we know that Klaproth already used it in 1801 (ref. S4).

The name Gadolin itself has its own history, which dates back two generations before the chemist Johan Gadolin. His grandfather, who came from a farm named Maunula not far from Turku, Finland, needed a surname when he entered the learned path. Re-tracing the name of his farm to the Latin ‘magnus’ GDL_nchem.2287-i1(meaning great), he first adopted Magnulin as his last name. Giving it further consideration, he envisaged both the Greek Megalin and the Finnish Isolin, then finally settled on the Hebrew Gadolin, from ‘gadol’ (pictured), also meaning ‘great’. All university students at the time had to learn Greek, Hebrew and Latin.

First preparation and observation of the element

According to Jørgensen’s accountS5, Marignac separated the rare earths by repeated recrystallization of the potassium double sulphates, K3Ln(SO4)3, and also reported the atomic weights, counted per one oxygen of mass 16. The atomic weight (‘équivalent’) of at least 120.5 for Gd2O3 in his first paper corresponds to a MGd of 156.75 — very close to the modern value of 157.25 (ref. S6). Another characteristic also reported by Marignac was that the oxide was ‘incolore’, meaning with no obvious absorption spectrum.

An interesting twist was the putative observation of phosphorescence, for gadolinium compounds, excited by electric discharges in vacuum — an experiment reported by both CrookesS7 and BoisbaudranS8. A bright green band at 541 and 549 nm was seen. Finally, though, Boisbaudran found that it was not connected to gadolinia and mentions a terbine impurity as a possible source for those bandsS8. This is in good agreement with recent studies of systems with Tb3+ ions, which do have an emission at 544 nm (ref. S9).

Pure metallic Gd was first produced by high-temperature electrolysis by Trombe in 1935 (ref. S10).

Literature

Finally, note that the original papers in French are freely available from the Gallica library gallica.bnf.fr.

References

S1. Marignac, [J-C. G. de] Ann. Chimie Phys.(Paris) 20, 535-557 (1880); Arch. Sci. Phys. Mat. (Genève) 3, 413-438 (1880).

S2. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, P.-E., C. R. Acad. Sci. 102, 902 (1886).

S3. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, P.-E. C. R. Acad. Sci. 89, 212–214 (1879).

S4. Klaproth, [M.H.] Crells Ann. 307–308 (1801).

S5. Jørgensen, C. K., Chimia 34, 381–383 (1980).

S6. Gadolin, J. Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsak. Handl. 15, 137–155 (1794); Crells Ann. 313–329 (1796).

S7. Crookes, W., (a) Proc. Roy. Soc. 243, 77-80 (1886); (b) Nature 33, 525–526 (1886); (c) Nature, 160–162 (1886) [June 17].

S8. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, P.-E., C. R. Acad. Sci. 103, 113–117 (1886)

S9. Wang, R-F., Zhou, D-C., Qiu, J-B., Yang, Y., Wang, C., J. Alloys Comp. 629, 310–314 (2015).

S10. Trombe, F., C. R. Acad. Sci. 200, 459–461 (1935).

Reactions: Claire Hansell

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1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I originally wanted to be a physicist after reading ‘The New World of Mr Tompkins’ repeatedly and thinking that physics, and specifically relativity, was the most amazing thing ever. Then I got to university, where the practical experiments for chemistry and materials science were infinitely more exciting than the physics ones. The pages and pages of maths required for the physics course were also nowhere near as interesting as making brown gloop in a flask, and better still finding out what said brown gloop actually was, so I changed tack and haven’t looked back.

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

Running – as in managing, not competing in – the London Olympics; because of all the intricacies in planning such a large scale event, the amazing number and range of sportspeople you would get to meet and all the VIP tickets! Although that job no longer exists, so does it still count?

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

I’m working on making sure that high quality research continues to be published in Nature Chemistry, and that Anne is not missed too much whilst she is off having a baby! I hope it will lead, for me, to a long and fruitful career in science publishing. And for the rest of the Nature Chemistry team, not too much stress and hopefully some valuable input.

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

Archimedes – but the dinner would definitely have to be set in the present day to see what he thought of the 2000 years’ worth of scientific developments that have happened since his time. And my Ancient Greek is not really at conversational level, so in this extremely hypothetical situation he would also be speaking English. And not dead.

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

September, during my last week in the lab I did my PhD in – some MALDI analysis for a colleague’s project. The spectra were some of the nicest MALDIs I’ve ever seen (if I do say so myself), but showed an almost exact opposite result to the one that we thought we had achieved. Such is life in chemistry.

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

Exiled?! I would hope that stranded is more likely than exiled, although they are both far from ideal situations to find oneself in. If it were looking like a semi-permanent situation, then the Encyclopedia Britannica or a similarly weighty tome to give me plenty to learn about, and maybe even a solution to get away. I wouldn’t take just one music album because hearing it repeated ad nauseam would get irritating very quickly, and that would be a shame if I previously liked it enough to pick it over every other music ever made.

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

George Whitesides, mainly for the answer to question 3, although I’m sure the other questions would give an insight to his way of thinking too.

Claire Hansell is an Associate Editor for Nature Chemistry.

 

In your element catch up

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Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t posted about our ‘In your element’ pieces for a couple of months — this is partly because things have been very busy over at the journal [I know I always say that… but it’s because it’s always true!] and also partly because these articles are now freely available online.

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{credit}© THE PRINT COLLECTOR/ALAMY{/credit}

After the New Year, we might stop posting about them altogether and let you go to the articles directly — but we’ll continue to update the periodic table here. And before that happens, let me share with you a few snippets from our three most recent elements.

In our November issue, science writer John Emsley took a detailed look at just how essential manganese is for life. Because the body human needs so little of it (a person contains on average of 12 mg) this only came to our attention in the 1950s, but manganese is present in many enzymes. It is the manganese superoxide dismutase, for example, that protects cells against the superoxide radical O2− (through dismutation into oxygen and hydrogen peroxide). Read the article to find out how manganese also turned up at the bottom of the sea.

In the December piece, geochemist Joel Blum from the University of Michigan, who works on understanding mercury’s behaviour in the environment, discussed why he fell under its spell. The metal that is liquid at room temperature, and particularly dense, has long captivated chemists and before them alchemists. Yet it is notoriously dangerous: mercury is a neurotoxin in most of its form, toxic by ingestion, inhalation and through the skin, both through chronic or acute exposure. It is mercury poisoning that caused hatters to develop dementia, owing to a step in the process of making felt hats that used a mercuric nitrate solution (Hg(NO3)2·2H2O) — their erratic behaviour led to the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’. The risks of mercury exposure were recognized at the end of the 19th century.

And the January article, which went live earlier this week, saw Markku Räsänen from the University of Helsinki reminisce about making the first neutral argon compound, HArF, in 1999 — also just before Christmas —  together with Mika Pettersson and Jan Lundell (now both professors in the University of Jyväskylä) and Leonid Khriachtchev (in the Räsänen group). Argon and the other noble gases have shown over the past several years that they can indeed form compounds, including hydrides. To what extent? We don’t know for sure yet. Theoretists and experimentalists, to your computers and benches!

A letter about ‘Neon behind the signs’

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Editor’s note: Earlier this year our ‘In your element’ section featured an article about neon written by Felice Grandinetti from the University of Tuscia (you can also find a write-up here by yours truly). We recently received a letter from Roald Hoffmann from Cornell University, which we are publishing here on the blog, with a reply from Felice Grandinetti. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments section below.

—————-

To the Editor:

Felice Grandinetti’s comment on the singularity of supremely inert Ne, and his suggestion of having He head group 2 of Mendeleyev’s Table are on the mark1. But he should have mentioned the people who suggested that before him — Henry Bent2 and Eric Scerri3 have argued over the years for this placement. And Wojciech Grochala likewise, supporting his argument with detailed quantum mechanical calculations on diverse He and Ne containing molecules4,5. Their well-thought-through arguments deserve reference.

Roald Hoffmann, Cornell University

References

1. Grandinetti, F. Nature Chem. 5, 438 (2013). [Link]

2. Bent, H. New Ideas in Chemistry from Fresh Energy for the Periodic Law (AuthorHouse, 2006). [Link]

3. Scerri, E. R. The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance (Oxford University Press, 2007). [Link]

4. Grochala, W. Pol. J. Chem. 83, 87–122 (2009). [Link to journal website]

5. Grochala, W. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 14, 14860–14868 (2012). [Link]

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Felice Grandinetti replies:

In reply to the letter by Roald Hoffmann:

My essay on neon chemistry intended to be an entertaining recognition of salient facts, systems, and concepts. The supreme inertness of Ne and the actual position of He in the periodic table are, in particular, “hot” topics, well highlighted before me by the scientists mentioned by Roald Hoffmann in his comment. I at present share the suggestion that neon is the most inert element, based also on my own experience in the theoretical investigation of noble gas compounds. The competition between He and Ne as the most inert element certainly invites further investigation, and I hope that this blog may be the place for future debate.

Felice Grandinetti, University of Tuscia

Reactions: Philippe Zinck

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Philippe Zinck is at the Catalysis and Solid State Chemistry Unit, University Lille 1 (France) and works on polymerization catalysis, with a focus on functional and bio-based polymers. He goes on Twitter by @PhilippeZinck.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I studied materials science, because at that time the materials science department of my college was more oriented toward research. I did the first year of my masters as an exchange student in Berlin, and the macromolecular chemistry teacher was really excellent, so I fell in love with that specialty. When I went back to France I chose the polymer chemistry department for the second year of my masters and my lab training period, and I stayed for my PhD.

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

Well I think I could have been a researcher in many other fields like physics or biology for example. What really makes me happy in my job is the research adventure. A bit like the ancient explorers, the researcher is discovering new territories, and that’s what makes me happy and excited when I go to work every morning (or almost).

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

We are just starting a biorefinery project for making bio-based polymers, with several industrial and academic partners. It’s a 10 year project, and you rarely have projects that last so long in our profession. Honestly, I don’t know where it will lead, but it gives me the opportunity to work on issues in society. I hope it will be a success story.

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

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. I find the way he conducted research fascinating. A lot of his discoveries were achieved through analogies between different research fields. Besides, he was also an excellent teacher, and did a lot to raise high school student’s interest for research. He also took an interest in societal issues. I had the chance to give a seminar in his lab several years ago and to meet him briefly, but not to have dinner with him!

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

I had to open my lab-book to check. It was in July 2010, I was trying to polymerize some carbohydrate derivatives in a new way, but it did not succeed. These kinds of reactions almost never work, and that would have demoralized the students, so I used to do them myself.

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

I’m hesitating between a world encyclopedia of wines and a longboard user manual, but the latter will definitely be more useful on a desert island! For the music, I’ll take one of Pink Floyd’s albums, probably Atom Heart Mother, a fantastic brass instruments album.

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

Well, I think that green chemistry is more than ever an essential issue for our society, for many reasons that I will not explain here. Scientists from this area should be interviewed on Reactions, like Barry Trost for example, among many others.

 

Lead between the lines

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Apologies for posting this a little late (again)… In the ‘in your element’ piece from our October issue, Somobrata Acharya from the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, recounts the role of lead throughout history. Element 82 has been known for thousands of years, and widely used owing to the fact that it is abundant, easy to extract, malleable and therefore easy to manipulate.

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© MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY / ALAMY

Lead was known to the ancient Greeks, somewhat confusingly under the name molybdos; it does make sense though, as they didn’t distinguish lead ores and molybdenum ones. In a similar manner, lead and tin were called plumbum nigrum (black lead) and plumbum candidum or album (bright lead), respectively, until the 16th century. Lead also appears in the Old Testament — I found these two incidences on the Elementymology & Elements Multidict website:

“Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” (Exodus 15, 10).

“Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead, Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean” (Numbers 31, 22-23).

This heavy metal was widespread in the Roman Empire, from water pipes to jewellery to sweetener production (in which lead acetate, also known as ‘lead sugar’ was used). It is toxic to humans though, damaging the nervous system and interfering with various organs and tissues. Lead poisoning can occur through either acute or chronic exposure — the latter being the most common one. It is very interesting that ancient Romans, Greeks and Chinese had noticed lead was toxic, yet it wasn’t until the 20th century that its use became strictly regulated, and leaded petrol and paint banned from sale.

The article also recounts some great discoveries involving this pervasive element — read for example in what way lead participated to the development of the radio, infrared technology, and understanding the quantum confinement effect.

Reactions: Ehud Keinan

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Ehud Keinan, President of the Israel Chemical Society, is in the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and works on supramolecular chemistry, biomolecular computing and biocatalysis.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

My chemistry teacher in high school, Mr. Zeev Karp, opened for me a window to the magic world of fascinating colors, smells, tastes, sounds, action and concepts that excited all my senses, triggered my curiosity, and fueled my imagination. At age 17, discovering the great opportunity of merging business with pleasure, I was determined to go for chemistry. I realized that if I became a research chemist I am awarded with a license to extend my childhood for the rest of my life, a license to keep playing wild games, with all the associated joy of discovery and creativity, and even be compensated for that. Obviously, that was an offer I couldn’t refuse, and I grabbed it. The funny thing is that even now, 50 years later, and being slightly less naïve, I still think the same way about chemistry.

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

I would probably be doing anything that involves imagination and creativity but nothing that involves routine procedures. I would be happy being a visual artist, photographer for National Geographic, architect, carpenter, gardener, a member of an exploring expedition, etc. In retrospect, as a research chemist I have been all of these.

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

I am working now on several things, probably too many. Yet, a new type of synthetic cavitands intrigues me much these days. We named these macrocyclic host molecules “multifarenes” due to their multifarious structures, comprising several different building blocks. One can envision many potential applications of these hollow molecules, including chemical sensing, highly selective catalysis and nano-fabrication. But frankly, my main motivation to make these molecules is their beautiful molecular architecture and the synthetic challenges involved.

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

Undoubtedly, my choice would be Thomas Jefferson. I guess that I share the view of President John F. Kennedy, who said in 1962 at a White House dinner attended by every living American Nobel Laureate: “There has never been a greater concentration of intellectual power here at the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” I adore his eternal statement inscribed around the rotunda interior in Jefferson Memorial: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Definitely, he is the guy I would love to spend some time with.

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

This is a painful issue, the frustrating side of my career. I have never wanted a career that requires sitting in a closed office for long hours, and, ironically, this is what I do most of my day. My most enjoyable experiments were always related to organic and organometallic synthesis, building a complex experimental setup with well-crafted glassware and sophisticated mechanical and electronic gadgets. Unfortunately, it has been already 10 years or more since I had an opportunity of playing alone with these toys. One of the games that I enjoy most is crystallizing a new organic compound, which has always involved more art than science. It is highly rewarding and aesthetically pleasing to watch the growing crystals of something that has never existed before. It is exciting to reveal the crystallographic structure, which is always unexpected, pretty much like scratching a lottery card or opening the white envelope in the Oscar ceremony.

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

I would probably take Beethoven symphonies or string quartets. The music is so rich with details and emotions, so it is never boring to listen to it time and again and discover hidden elements every time, pretty much like looking again and again at a masterpiece of Rembrandt or van Gogh. This is important because I’ll probably have much free time on that island. For the same reasons I would choose March’s Advanced Organic Chemistry because I love organic chemistry, I love thinking of reaction mechanisms and the limitless architecture of organic molecules. I am sure that every time I’ll get back to March I’ll find new points and come up with new ideas. Frankly, I look forward to going exile on a desert island because this will give me a great opportunity to focus on writing my own book, which has been waiting for too long.

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

Either Albert Eschenmoser or Jack Dunitz would be a great choice. Both are not only giant scientists but also extremely original and creative individuals with very broad knowledge and broad perspective on almost any topic, a quality that many specialized scientists lack these days. I see both as role models for the young generation of scientists and I’ll be intrigued to read their answers to the above questions.

Reactions: Guo-Xin Jin

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Guo-Xin Jin is in the Chemistry Department at Fudan University, China. His research interests include catalysts for olefin polymerization and organometallic complexes.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

When I entered the university and chose chemistry, given my circumstances in China at that time, I wasn’t able to know what it really is, except that it is useful. After then, I quickly became fascinated by the rich and beautiful colour changes of chemical reactions and reasons behind these changes. The ‘colour’ part might have something to do with me working on the organometallic chemistry now, because organometallic chemistry is always colourful. And the ‘wondering of “truths” behind a phenomenon’ part stayed with me ever since and eventually made me a chemist, or more accurately, a scientist.

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

If not chemist, I might become an engineer. I have been dreaming of building bridges in my childhood. I guess there must be a part of me that is always eager to construct. And being a chemist, I still would like to consider myself as an engineer at the same time – on the molecular level. I build with molecules.

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

As I said, I have been working on organometallic chemistry, which is the core of countless industrialized chemical processes. We the organometallic chemists always try to manipulate the way metals and organic compounds function, and to reveal the relationships of structures and properties. Give us time, and eventually, we will be able to build any organometallic molecules we want, and to design structures of molecules for any functions that we hope to achieve.

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

E. O. Fischer, the founder of carbenes and carbynes. He is the person who shaped my way of thinking about chemistry and doing chemistry in many aspects. And I always feel like returning to his wisdom, his diligence and his life-time devotion to chemistry, which never fail to recharge my energy as a chemist.

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

It was no more than ten years ago, actually. I did one reaction when we were trying to industrialize one of our processes. The reaction could be dangerous if not being handled properly, so I did it myself.

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

I’ll never forget the experience of walking into some fipple flute music by the side of Lake Geneva several years ago. I guess I will take a fipple flute album with me to that island. It will make a fine island album – simple, mysterious, consoling.

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

Gerhard Erker. I always admire his way of developing a whole story of frustrated Lewis pair out of one single experimental finding, and would like to know more about his unique way of thinking about chemistry.