October 11, 2019

Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who—in keeping with the vision of the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel—have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Today, World Book looks at the first three prizes, in the scientific categories of physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

On Monday, October 7, 2019, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was given jointly to the scientists William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza for their work showing how cells adapt to the changing availability of oxygen. Kaelin, Ratcliffe, and Semenza identified the molecular machinery that allows cells to respond to changes in oxygen levels. Their discoveries offer promising new strategies in the treatment of such diseases and maladies as anemia, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.

William G. Kaelin, Jr., was born in New York and is a professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Peter J. Ratcliffe of the United Kingdom is the director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London and director of the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford. Gregg L. Semenza, also from New York, is a professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

On Tuesday, October 8, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to the Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and to the Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their work on explaining the evolution of the universe and for discovering distant exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system). Among other things, Peebles theorized how matter in the young universe swirled into galaxies. In 1995, Mayor and Queloz discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star elsewhere in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, enhancing the study of planetary systems beyond our own that could support life.

James Peebles is the Albert Einstein professor of science at Princeton University in New Jersey. Michel Mayor is an astrophysicist and professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Geneva. Didier Queloz is a professor of physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, and at the University of Geneva.

On Wednesday, October 9, the Nobel Foundation announced that John B. Goodenough of the United States, M. Stanley Whittingham of the United Kingdom, and Akira Yoshino of Japan would share the prize for chemistry for developing and refining rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The lightweight, rechargeable, and powerful batteries are used in everything from mobile phones to laptop computers and electric vehicles. They can also store great amounts of energy from solar and wind power, further enabling the possibility of a fossil fuel-free future.

At 97 years old, John B. Goodenough is the oldest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize. He is currently the Virginia H. Cockrell Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. M. Stanley Whittingham is a distinguished professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Akira Yoshino is an honorary fellow at Tokyo’s Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.

March 6, 2019

On March 6, 1869, 150 years ago today, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev presented his version of the periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society in Moscow. The periodic table arranges the known chemical elements into periods (rows) and groups (columns) based on their characteristics. A chemical element is a substance that contains only one kind of atom. Attempts to create a standard table of the chemical elements predated Mendeleev, but his version was quickly accepted and is still in use—with only slight modification—today.

The modern periodic table is similar to the table developed by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. Credit: WORLD BOOK

The periodic table ranks as one of the most useful tools in chemistry and perhaps in all of science. No other scientific field has such a simple but descriptive means of representing its fundamental units. Elements in the same column share certain chemical properties (characteristics). These properties repeat row by row in a regular or periodic fashion, giving the table its name.

The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev developed the modern periodic table of elements. Credit: Public Domain

The French chemist Antoine Lavoisier first established the modern concept of the chemical element in the late 1700’s. As more and more elements were discovered, chemists noticed that the elements show certain chemical similarities and trends in their properties. In a paper published in 1829, the German chemist Johann Döbereiner grouped some elements into triads (groups of three) based on the similarities in their chemical properties. After the discovery of more elements, the English chemist John Newlands noted around 1865 that if the elements are arranged according to their atomic masses (amounts of matter), their chemical properties repeat after eight elements.

Click to view larger image
Mendeleev’s Russian language periodic table was published 150 years ago in 1869. Credit: © The Print Collector/Alamy Images

Two qualities of Mendeleev’s 1869 table made it superior to previous attempts. First, Mendeleev did not organize the elements strictly by mass. Instead, he switched the order of some elements on the basis of their chemical properties. Second, he deliberately left gaps in his table where no known elements seemed to fit. Mendeleev correctly predicted that these gaps represented elements that had not yet been discovered.

Around the same time as Mendeleev, the German chemist Julius Lothar Meyer independently developed a similar periodic table. However, his table was not published until 1870.

October 5, 2018

Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who–in keeping with the vision of chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel–have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. On Monday, the foundation awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to scientists James P. Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their research on immunotherapy that stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. Allison and Honjo helped develop powerful new therapies to treat, and in some instances cure, certain types of cancer.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

James P. Allison is with the department of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Tasuku Honjo is a professor in the department of immunology and genomic medicine at Kyoto University.

On Tuesday, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to three scientists: Arthur Ashkin (from the United States), Gérard Mourou (France), and Donna Strickland (Canada) for their groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. Ashkin invented “optical tweezers,” an instrument that uses lasers to manipulate such tiny objects as atoms, viruses, and living cells. Mourou and Strickland worked together to generate the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created. This technology has many useful applications and is the basis for LASIK eye surgery. The pair published an article on the laser research in 1985, when Mourou was teaching at the University of Rochester in New York and Strickland was a graduate student there.

Arthur Ashkin’s prize-winning work was conducted while he worked at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. At age 96, he is the oldest Nobel Prize recipient ever. Gérard Mourou is currently with the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. Donna Strickland is associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Strickland is just the third woman in 117 years to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Polish-born scientist Marie Curie shared the prize in 1903 for her research on radiation. In 1963, German-born scientist Maria Goeppert Mayer shared the prize for her research on atomic nuclei.

On Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, the Nobel Foundation announced that Americans Frances H. Arnold and George P. Smith would share the prize for chemistry with Sir Gregory Winter of the United Kingdom for using directed evolution to synthesize proteins. This process mimics natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution, in a laboratory to create novel proteins with useful properties.

Arnold is currently a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. She is the fifth woman to win the chemistry prize. Smith is a former professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Winter is affiliated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

October 5, 2017

Yesterday, October 4, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry to three molecular biologists: Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson. The three made key contributions to the development of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) for producing high-resolution images of biomolecules (molecules from living things).

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

An electron microscope uses a beam of electrons to magnify a specimen. It can produce detailed images of smaller areas than can an optical microscope, which uses beams of light. The wavelength (distance between wave crests) of an electron beam is much shorter than that of a light beam. This allows an electron microscope to make very small structures visible.

After the first electron microscopes were built in the 1930’s, they became important tools in chemistry, medicine, physics, and other scientific areas. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Joachim Frank developed an image-processing method that turned the electron microscope’s fuzzy, two-dimensional images into sharp, three-dimensional ones. This greatly improved researchers’ abilities to study the fine details of microscopic structures.

Scientists thought, however, that electron microscopes were useful only for imaging dead matter. The intensity of an electron beam destroyed biological material. Electron microscopes also require a vacuum (space with little matter) to work. Biomolecules collapse in a vacuum. In the 1980’s, Jacques Dubochet used cryotechnology (technology involving very low temperatures) to solve these problems. He surrounded a biomolecule in water and cooled the water so rapidly that it solidified as a glasslike structure around the specimen. This protected the specimen from the effects of the vacuum, with its natural shape and structure remaining intact. This also protected the specimen from the electron beam’s harmful radiation.

In 1990, Richard Henderson produced an image of a protein at atomic resolution (visible at the scale of an atom). This breakthrough came after decades of work carefully preparing specimens and adding details to the image. Henderson traveled around the world to find electron microscopes with the sharpest resolutions to enhance his protein model. Henderson’s image proved that cryo-EM could be used to produce images in fine detail.

The work of Dubochet, Frank, and Henderson paved the way for cryo-electron microscopy. Researchers can now freeze biomolecules in a natural stage or pose and portray them at a very high resolution. Frank was born in Siegen, Germany, in 1940. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1970 from the University of Munich. Dubochet was born in Aigle, Switzerland, in 1943. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1973 from the Universities of Basel and Geneva. Henderson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1945. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1969 from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

October 6, 2016

Yesterday, October 5, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry to three scientists for developing tiny machines with huge potential impacts. Bernard L. Feringa of the University of Groningenin in the Netherlands, Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg in France, and Sir J. Frasier Stoddart of Northwestern University in the United States were all awarded shares of the prize for their pioneering work in the field of nanotechnology.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

Nanotechnology is the systematic production of structures that are slightly larger than atoms and molecules. Nanotechnology relies on scientific and engineering disciplines, along with manufacturing technologies, to design and produce useful products. It involves working on the nanometer scale, or nanoscale. Nano means billionth. A nanometer is 0.000000001 meter ( ¹/25,400,000 inch)—approximately ¹/100,000 the width of a human hair or 3 to 5 times the diameter of a single atom. The nanoscale is considered to cover dimensions between 1 and 100 nanometers. Nanoscale materials, and the objects made from them, display fundamentally different properties and behavior than the same materials at larger scales.

Nanoscale machines were proposed in 1959 by the American physicist Richard Feynman—himself a Nobel laureate. But the technological difficulties associated with working on such a small scale stymied researchers for decades. Starting in the 1980’s, the three 2016 laureates began working separately on different materials, such as musclelike pulleys and spinning motors, that will form the backbone of future nanoscale devices. Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize virtually every technological field, from computers to medicine. Today, researchers are building upon the inventions of Feringa, Sauvage, and Stoddart to design the tiny machines of the future.

January 5, 2016

The year 2016 heralded the addition of four new chemical elements—the building blocks of matter—to the periodic table. The new elements, which have yet to be officially named, are numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118 on the table. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry recognized the new elements on Dec. 30, 2015. Teams of scientists from America, Japan, and Russia discovered them.

Periodic Table. Credit: WORLD BOOK

The periodic table is one of the most useful tools in science. It organizes the chemical elements into rows and columns, which show how the elements are related and what properties they share. For example, elements in the left and center of the table are metallic. Elements in the far right column, called the noble gases, do not normally react with other elements. The discovery of elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 fills all the remaining gaps in the periodic table’s seventh row.

Each chemical element is a kind of atom. The core of an atom, called a nucleus, contains even smaller particles called protons. An atom’s proton count determines its number on the periodic table. The lightest element, hydrogen, has just one proton, so it is the first chemical element on the table. Helium—element #2—has two protons. Carbon has six protons, oxygen has eight, and iron has 26. The more protons an element has, the heavier it is.

Extremely heavy elements are unstable, tending to fall apart like towers of loose blocks. Elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 are so heavy and unstable that they do not even exist in nature. Scientists created them in the lab by smashing together the nuclei of lighter atoms. They then observed the resulting new atoms—easier said than done, since the heavy atoms disintegrate into lighter atoms and particles in just a fraction of a second.

Other World Book articles: 

• Mendeleev, Dmitri Ivanovich
• Two New Superheavy Chemical Elements – A Behind the Headlines article

October 13, 2014

Two Americans and a German have won the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their “ground-breaking” efforts in developing ways to peer more closely at the inner workings of living cells using optical (light-bending) microscopes than scientists had thought possible. The winners, all physical chemists, are William E. Moerner of Stanford University in Stanford, California, and Eric Betzig of the Janelia Research Campus at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia; and Stefan W. Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, both in Germany. The scientists were honored “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy,” which, the Nobel Committee said, is producing “new knowledge of greatest benefit to mankind … on a daily basis.” They will share the $1.1-million prize equally.

The scientists, working independently, turned the microscope into a nanoscope–a tool for seeing “the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells, according to the Nobel Committee. “They can see how molecules create synapses [bridges] between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate [clump]; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.” Other types of microscopy kill living cells.

Fluorescence microscopy allows researchers to track the proteins involved in Alzheimer’s disease as they clump. In this photomicrograph, the round, yellow-brown spots, or plaques, are made up of abnormal amyloid protein. (© Jan Naslund, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden)

In fluorescence microscopy, cells or parts of cells are stained with green fluorescent protein (GFP), a naturally occurring molecule that glows green when exposed to blue or ultraviolet light. The light is typically captured by a digital camera or another detector connected to the microscope. By using GFP effectively and manipulating the captured images, scientists can identify tiny details within a cell. Since the 1870′s, scientists had believed that optical microscopes would never be able to visualize anything smaller than 0.2 micrometers, a limit based on the wavelength of light. Using fluorescence microscopy, researchers can visualize objects that are at least three times as small as that. Under certain circumstances, the resolution (ability to produce a clear image) may be even greater.

Additional World Book articles:

• Ernst Abbe
• Fluorescence
• Nobel Prizes in chemistry (table)
• Nobel Prizes (2008) (a Back in Time article)

October 9, 2013

Three foreign-born United States citizens have won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in designing powerful computer models that are widely used to study an amazing variety of complex chemical interactions. The winner are Austrian-born Martin Karplus of Harvard University and the University of Strasbourg; South African-born Michael Levitt of Stanford University School of Medicine; and Israeli-born Arieh Warshel of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Developing new drugs is only one application of this pioneering work. “Today the computer is just as important a tool for chemists as the test tube. Simulations are so realistic that they predict the outcome of traditional experiments,” the Nobel Committee said. “The work of Karplus, Levitt and Warshel is ground-breaking in that they managed to make Newton’s classical physics work side-by-side with the fundamentally different quantum physics. Previously, chemists had to choose to use either or.” Quantum physics is the study of the smallest known units of matter and their activity. Using programs based on Karplus, Levitt, and Warshel’s models, researchers can study the behavior of large molecules as well as the atoms and electrons in them.

“Chemical reactions occur at lightning speed,” the Nobel Committee explained. “In a fraction of a millisecond, electrons jump from one atomic nucleus to the other. Classical chemistry has a hard time keeping up; it is virtually impossible to experimentally map every little step in a chemical process. Aided by the methods now awarded with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, scientists let computers unveil chemical processes, such as a catalyst’s purification of exhaust fumes or the photosynthesis in green leaves.”

October 10, 2012

American scientists Robert J. Lefkowitz of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Brian K. Kobilka of Stanford University in Stanford, California, were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry. They received the prize for their research on structures that allow living cells to sense and respond to chemical messages in their environment.

The human body is composed of many millions of cells organized into tissues, organs, and organ systems. In order to function, the cells must be able to sense and respond to stimuli and to communicate so they can work together. Lefkowitz and Kobilka studied structures called G-protein-coupled receptors that are found on nearly all cells in the human body. These receptors detect chemical messengers, including hormones, neurotransmitters, and drugs, so particular cells can react appropriately. The receptors are also an important component of the senses that detect light, odor, and flavor. Scientists had long known that these receptors were made up of so-called G-proteins, but they did not understand how they interacted.

Lefkowitz began his research by studying the effects of a hormone called adrenalin (also called epinephrine). Adrenalin stimulates the heart and relaxes muscles in the small air passages in the lungs. Doctors use it to treat severe allergic reactions and to restore a heartbeat in patients who are suffering cardiac arrest. Lefkowitz tagged chemical substances that affect adrenalin receptors by attaching a radioactive molecule to the substance. He could then see exactly how the molecules interacts with the receptors on the surface of targeted cells.

Drugs and other chemical messengers attach to receptor molecules on cells. (World Book diagram)

Kobilka joined Lefkowitz and began work to understand the genes that control the structure of the receptor and how it interacts with the messenger chemical. In 2011, the scientists were able to visualize and describe the steps at the exact moment when a hormone from outside a cell transfers a signal to the G-protein-coupled receptor inside of the cell.

Scientists have known for decades that up to half of all drugs act through such receptors on cells, though they have not understood exactly how the receptors function. The discoveries by Lefkowitz and Kobilka have been extremely valuable to scientists as they work to develop better drugs to combat such diseases as cancer and diabetes.

Additional World Book articles:

• Immune system
• Nervous system

Dec. 2, 2011

The names flerovium and livermorium have been proposed for two recently discovered chemical elements, according to an announcement by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). A chemical element is a substance with only one kind of atom. IUPAC is the recognized authority for naming chemical elements. The two elements were officially recognized in June. IUPAC and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics spent about three years determining if the elements had actually been created. IUPAC will allow the public about six months to voice its opinion of the proposed names before they are made permanent. The addition of flerovium and livermorium increases the total number of recognized elements in the periodic table to 114.

Flerovium (atomic symbol, Fl), previously known as element 114, was named in honor of the Russian scientist Georgi N. Flerov, who founded the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. Livermorium (atomic symbol, Lv), previously known as element 116, was named in honor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. Both elements were discovered in collaborations between the JINR and Livermore.

A particle accelerator can be used to create chemical elements that do not occur naturally on the earth. GSI

Both flerovium and livermorium are superheavy artificial elements–chemical elements made in a laboratory by smashing atoms of two lighter elements together in a particle accelerator in the hope that they will combine into one heavier atom. Plutonium is the heaviest naturally occurring chemical element. Most artificial elements exist for only a fraction of a second before breaking down into lighter elements once again. Many scientists believe that there may be other superheavy elements that do not break down so quickly but remain stable for a longer period. Such elements are believed to occupy a so-called “island of stability” long sought by chemists.

Additional World Book articles:

• Mendeleev, Dmitri Ivanovich
• Meyer, Julius Lothar
• Moseley, Henry Gwyn-Jeffreys