Nobel Laureates

The cockchafer speech

jricco — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:00:05 +0000

The cockchafer speech

The what???

Well, you see, one of the traditional events at the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting is the annual cockchafer speech. Let me explain that.

The first conference in 1951 ended with a gathering of all attending Nobel laureates and their host, Count Lennart Bernadotte, to take a group photograph. Unfortunately it turned out that the laureates felt quite uncomfortable in front of the camera - and a group photograph of annoyed men would not have given the right impression of the successful first meeting.

So, when Count Bernadotte saw a cockchafer lying on the ground, he picked it up and handed it to the Nobel laureate Adolf Butenandt. "Please hold a speech about the immortality of cockchafers," he requested him. While Butenandt was irritated the rest of the attending laureates burst out laughing.

Ever since it has become a tradition that one laureate holds a speech about cockchafers during the group photograph. Unfortunately the speech has been neglected in the last years because of two actual serious speeches on the last day of the conference - one held by a laureate, one held by a young researcher. But who knows, the bug might find its way into one of this year's speeches...

More information on the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting can be found here! (We do have an English section.)

PS: My British friend Sarah just announced that she's never heard of that beetle before. I'm feeling insecure and irritated. It seems to be the right name though. For your information, the beetle does not have a rude name in German - we call it "may bug".

jricco Thu, 06/25/2009 - 06:00

Catalysis at the Nobel Laureates Meeting

jricco — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:00:12 +0000

Catalysis at the Nobel Laureates Meeting

When the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald received the Nobel prize for his research on catalysis in 1909 he probably didn't expect that his field of work would still be one of the most important topics in modern chemistry one hundred years later. Nevertheless all three Nobel Prizes in chemistry in the last years were given to scientists that worked in catalysis research.

One of them, Gerhard Ertl will be giving a talk on the catalysis happening when solids are coated with gossamer surfaces. The scientist got the Nobel prize in 2007 and named his speech "From atoms to complexity - reactions on surfaces". In his opinion catalysis is an example for natural self organisation mechanisms.

As Wilhelm Ostwald described it in 1909, catalysis is the "acceleration of a slowly running chemical process by the presence of an external substance" and as such an inevitable component of modern chemistry. Most chemical reactions would be too slow without the addition of a catalysator to be useful in nowadays science.

Furthermore the 1997-Laureate John E. Walker (no pun intended) will we talking about "Energy conversion in biology" - a forecast on future fields for catalysis. Walker will be explaining how catalysis may be the key to an eco-friendly energy supply - once we understand how regenrative energies work and how we could produce and use enzymes in energy generation.

In the press release of the Lindau Meeting named "Creative Playmakers" there will be further details on this topic. And it also enunciates the hope that catalysis may be looking forward to a career of at least one hundred further years:

"One day the vision of a regenerative and eco-friendly hydrogen economy to supply our earth with energy may become reality."

» Jessica RiccÃ² is an editor at ScienceBlogs Germany.

jricco Tue, 06/23/2009 - 03:00

The Nobel Laureates Meeting in Lindau - live on ScienceBlogs Germany

jricco — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:00:50 +0000

The Nobel Laureates Meeting in Lindau - live on ScienceBlogs Germany

Annually focusing on a different discipline, the Nobel Laureates meet in Lindau (Southern Germany). This year's meeting is going to be about chemistry and we, the editors of ScienceBlogs.de will be covering all events along with seven blogging scientists.

Although there will of course be lots of articles in German, we also launched an English section of the blog in which the most interesting articles will be translated - may the readers of this site forgive occasional bumpiness in our language skills.

As mentioned earlier here, PZ Myers will also attend the conference. The main topic of this year's meeting will be the role chemistry might play in the solution of problems of the 21st century, especially focusing on climate change.

Altoghether 23 Nobel Laureates confirmed their attendance to be at Lake Constance between 28/6/09 and 3/7/09 where they will be talking to colleagues and more than 600 young academics from all over the world.

To not miss anything it is worth keeping an eye on our blog - in case, dass du ein wenig Deutsch verstehst, kannst du auch hier lesen!

For more informations, there pages might be interesting:

* The program of the 59th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting
* News about the conference on twitter: LindauNobel
* RSS-Feed of the blog for the Nobel Laureates Meeting 2009

jricco Fri, 06/19/2009 - 09:00