Musings on chemistry and the history and philosophy of science
This is part 1 of a series of posts delving into the fundamental scientific challenges in drug discovery. Often you will hear people talking about why drugs are expensive: it’s the greedy pharmaceutical companies, the patent system, the government, capitalism itself...
The most succinct encapsulation of the value of curiosity to practical pursuits came from Michael Faraday; when asked by William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, about the utility of electricity, Faraday is purported to have replied, One day, sir, you may tax it...
In the summer of 1956, a handful of men gathered in a former little red schoolhouse in San Diego. These men were among the most imaginative scientists and engineers of their generation.
Hans Bethe was one of the greatest and most versatile scientists of the twentieth century. The sheer magnitude of his scientific accomplishments ranging across almost every field of theoretical physics almost defies belief; he was probably the last “universalist”, a man who could solve virtually any physics problem that came his way...
I was a mere toddler in the early 1980s when they announced the “golden age of computational drug design”. Now I may have been a toddler, but I often hear stories about the impending golden age from misty-eyed veterans in the field...
Alex Wellerstein who is a historian of nuclear science has some cogent thoughts that feed into what has long since been a pet peeve of mine: the tendency for politicians, the media and scientists themselves to compare every large-scale government science or technology enterprise to the famed Manhattan Project...
“Chemistry”, declared Roger Kornberg in an interview, “is the queen of all sciences. Our best hope of applying physical principles to the world around us is at the level of chemistry.
British biochemist Fred Sanger died today at 95. He’s the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in chemistry, an achievement that is unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon.
The Fundamental Physics prize has again been awarded to sophisticated mathematical speculation disconnected from experimental evidence. The 2012 Fundamental Physics prize was shared among nine physicists, most of who were string theorists. String theorists continue to dominate the awardees of this year’s New Horizons and Frontiers in Physics prizes...
It is often said that chemistry lacks “big questions” like physics and biology. But this is not entirely true. The origin of life is a quintessentially chemical problem, and it’s as big as fundamental questions can get...
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