Trends in Chemistry Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize follows a pattern. It is told that a subdivision shouldn't get the price in consecutive years but of course the selection committee has the last laugh. Let's look at the distribution for the past 30+ years:


2017 - Biochemistry
2016 - Organic Chemistry
2015 - Biochemistry
2014 - Physical Chemistry
2013 - Physical Chemistry
2012 - Biochemistry
2011 - Materials Chemistry
2010 - Organic Chemistry
2009 - Biochemistry
2008 - Biochemistry
2007 - Physical Chemistry
2006 - Biochemistry
2005 - Organic Chemistry
2004 - Biochemistry
2003 - Biochemistry
2002 - Biochemistry
2001 - Organic Chemistry
2000 - Materials Chemistry
1999 - Physical Chemistry
1998 - Physical Chemistry
1997 - Biochemistry
1996 - Materials Chemistry
1995 - Organic Chemistry
1994 - Organic Chemistry
1993 - Biochemistry
1992 - Physical Chemistry
1991 - Physical Chemistry
1990 - Organic Chemistry
1989 - Biochemistry
1988 - Biochemistry
1987 - Organic Chemistry
1986 - Physical Chemistry
1985 - Inorganic Chemistry

Please feel free to discuss in the comments down below.

Richard Feynmann's Tiny Machines lecture in 1984

I've come across with this lecture by the guy who famously said there is plenty of room at the bottom. If you haven't, here you go:

Reviewer cruelty

I don't know how much thick skin you have but this gets under my skin:

Reviewer #2: The manuscript describes some good results on the ... and ... properties of a few novel .... Rather like the ... field, this is a research topic that is now approaching saturation point in the literature.

Now the question is, who calls the end for a research field?

2013 Nobel Chemistry Prize - The Year of Inorganic

Tomorrow (Oct 9) the Nobel Chemistry Prize will be announced. And it is 35 minutes away for the Physics Nobel Prize. Visit Nobel Prize page for all that fun.

Meanwhile, I'll do yet another take on the winners of the Chemistry Nobel Prize. I'm sure it is already decided and perhaps a very able hacker can extract the information but nonetheless, we can still take a guess.

I'm still stuck on the Bio-inorganic theme as I did last year. There are very good lists by Chembark and Curius Wavefunction but I'd like to take the roulette game. Hit or miss.

My anticipation is a trio out of Harry Gray, Stephen Lippard, Sunney Chan, Richard Holm for their work on metalloenzymes and the electron transport phenomena as well the spectroscopic analysis of them.

If you look into the cycle, it is probably Inorganic this year. I cannot think of any inorganic breakthrough other than porous materials but it is too early for them either.

Let's see what happens.

Chasing the holy grail in water splitting

Kazuhiko Maeda (from Tokyo Institute of Technology) explains well in his recent review that a Z-scheme photocatalyst system can make dreams come true: producing hydrogen and oxygen gases from water by sunlight. Combining a H₂ evolution photocatalyst with an O₂ evolving one is known for sometime as the key for ultimate artificial photosynthesis. Although hopeful developments exist (as also elaborated in this 15-page-long-and-strong article), I don't feel much optimistic about this photocatalytic water splitting in general. A cold-fusion-like fate is certainly not out of sight. We have to be careful. 

Proton conductive copper oxalate xerogels

Saha et al. (from Rahul Banerjee group at Indian National Chemical Laboratory) reported a rapid way of making copper xerogels (with a max surface area of 67 m2/g) starting from oxalic acid and copper perchlorate. I always taught oxalic acid would make good MOFs (hence my interest in this work) but I guess xerogels would be the best you can get. I'm sure the authors tried to get ordered structures first. Great work, nonetheless. 

Galvanic replacement goes universal!

It's been a while since we enjoyed a nano breakthrough. But recently, May 24th to be exact, Prof. Taeghwan Hyeon (Oh et al., Science, 340, 964) and his group at Seoul National University took the galvanic exchange method of making nanocages (e.g. see Prof. Younan Xia's seminal work on gold nanocages) and applied to metal oxides. They successfully made boxes of iron oxides by mixing Fe³⁺ with Mn₃O₄ nanocubes. This is a major expansion of the galvanic exchange methodology and certainly we'll see a trillion other examples, since metal oxides are much more abundant and stable than metallic counterparts (in case you forget, just think about our oxygen rich atmosphere). Congrats to Hyeon and Nicola Pinna (a WCU prof. at SNU) for another spectacular discovery!   

2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - it's hopefully the year for metalloproteins

It's that time of the year again. Who will get the highest honor of the scientific research?

Chembark already has some math going for the predictions. His most bet is for "Nuclear Hormone Signaling, by Chambon/Evans/Jensen".  Thompson reuters says Louis Brus for QDots work based on citation counts.

DOE H2 storage target for 2015 is broken!

Theoretically...
In an excellent theoretical study, Bill Goddard and his team (Mendoza-Cortes et al.) at Caltech showed that a PdCl₂ decorated COF-301 surpasses DOE target of 40 g/L hydrogen storage with a capacity of 60 g/L. And the isotherm reaches DOE target even below 10 bar pressure and all is at 298 K. This is very exciting! 

2012 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience goes to Mildred Dresselhaus of MIT

Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus (MIT) won the prestigious Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for 2012. She was awarded as the single recipient "for her pioneering contributions to the study of phonons, electron-phonon interactions, and thermal transport in nanostructures."

It turns out that she "has laid the foundation for our understanding of the influence of reduced dimensionality on the fundamental thermal and electrical properties of materials."

This award also signifies the first woman recipient of Kavli Prize in Nanoscience.

Congrats to Mildred!

Watch out magnetotactic bacteria are splitting

Ever wondered how nanomagnets are shared when a magnetotactic bacteria is splitting into two? The mystery was resolved for good by Katzmann et al. (Dirk Schüler group at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) with a slick in situ electron microscopy monitoring experiment (see the figure). Authors argue that the bacteria bends to tune down the magnetostatic interactions but not destroy the alignment entirely as the newly formed daughters will need that after the split. The type of the bacteria is Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense. 

Top Institutions in Chemistry

Science Watch reported the ranking of top institutions in chemistry for the International Year of Chemistry, 2011. The study came out as the "Featured Analysis, Sept/Oct 2011"

Although university rankings or top colleges lists are prepared by looking into many factors, from student satisfaction to nobel prize winners, this list purely represents the best research institutions of chemistry or in other words, best chemistry departments (based on the data from 2001-2011). If your institution is within this list, you must be proud:

Top 20 Countries in All Fields

ScienceWatch.com has the list of "Top 20 countries in all fields" for the past decade, the years of 2000-2010.

The list is a product of the Essential Science Indicators by Thomson Reuters. The data counted for all authors in full, meaning that "For articles with multiple authors representing different nations, each listed nation receives full, not fractional, citation credit for the given paper". The study dates in December 2010.

LISTED BY PAPERS

Rank	Country	Papers	Citations	Cites per paper
1	USA	2,967,957	46,796,090	15.77
2	JAPAN	770,252	7,877,699	10.23
3	GERMANY	762,599	9,960,100	13.06
4	PEOPLES R CHINA	719,971	4,227,779	5.87
5	ENGLAND	679,394	9,979,737	14.69
6	FRANCE	542,293	6,660,630	12.28
7	CANADA	430,856	5,619,293	13.04
8	ITALY	409,232	4,770,753	11.66
9	SPAIN	315,420	3,256,075	10.32
10	AUSTRALIA	284,250	3,359,748	11.82
11	RUSSIA	267,319	1,243,711	4.65
12	INDIA	266,230	1,497,065	5.62
13	SOUTH KOREA	254,599	1,767,799	6.94
14	NETHERLANDS	239,892	3,687,829	15.37
15	BRAZIL	190,801	1,197,953	6.28
16	SWEDEN	174,052	2,548,046	14.64
17	SWITZERLAND	172,904	2,873,881	16.62
18	TAIWAN	162,197	1,115,524	6.88
19	POLAND	144,559	954,220	6.6
20	TURKEY	138,345	687,389	4.97
SOURCE: ESSENTIAL SCIENCE INDICATORSSM FROM THOMSON REUTERS, TIME PERIOD: 2000-AUGUST 31, 2010 (FOURTH BIMONTHLY PERIOD OF 2010).

Top 20 Countries in Chemistry

ScienceWatch listed the "Top 20 Nations in Chemistry" in their Country Feature dated March 2011:

USA tops the list, followed by Japan and Germany.

Rank	Country	Papers	Citations	Cites per paper
1	USA	229,635	4,308,363	18.76
2	JAPAN	115,760	1,363,434	11.78
3	GERMANY	96,984	1,349,496	13.91
4	PEOPLES R CHINA	181,496	1,245,602	6.86
5	FRANCE	66,244	852,544	12.87
6	ENGLAND	55,781	844,654	15.14
7	SPAIN	46,762	581,282	12.43
8	ITALY	42,623	528,136	12.39
9	CANADA	33,507	454,102	13.55
10	INDIA	64,903	451,536	6.96
11	SOUTH KOREA	36,557	360,424	9.86
12	NETHERLANDS	18,817	346,562	18.42
13	SWITZERLAND	18,663	328,949	17.63
14	AUSTRALIA	19,131	237,923	12.44
15	SWEDEN	14,800	226,028	15.27
16	RUSSIA	61,590	219,541	3.56
17	POLAND	29,453	207,607	7.05
18	TAIWAN	20,041	186,746	9.32
19	BELGIUM	13,246	166,600	12.58
20	BRAZIL	20,637	158,281	7.67
SOURCE: ESSENTIAL SCIENCE INDICATORSSM FROM THOMSON REUTERS, TIME PERIOD: JANUARY 2000-DECEMBER 31, 2010 (SIXTH BIMONTHLY PERIOD OF 2010).

They listed the "Top 20 Nations in Chemistry" by total citations. "Essential Science Indicators" database from Thomson Reuters was used to create the list.

One important finding is that "the average citation rate for field of chemistry was 11.19"