Michael Rosenthal

(11/2020) The 2020 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics have been awarded. The chemistry prize has gone to Jennifer A. Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley and to Emmanuelle Charpentier, a French microbiologist who serves as a director at the Max Planck Unit for the Study of Pathogens. Their work is the development of a gene-editing tool that can change the DNA of plants and animals with great precision. This technique has a very important role in cancer therapy and in curing inherited diseases. Goran K. Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences describes their work as "rewriting the code of life." Their work was completed in 2012, so the award was somewhat of a surprise to them. The explanation of the technique is somewhat complex, especially for me, who avoided taking a biology course in high school in favor of chemistry and physics, so I urge the curious among you readers to seek out a more detailed explanation.

The human cell contains about 6 billion chemical units of DNA (so I’m told!). Named CRISPR, the technique can find and modify just one! The technique can find, find and delete, or find and replace just one unit at a time. Thus using this technique one can change the genetic information in any cell in any organism!

The technique has broad applications, from transforming the patterns of butterfly wings, mutating ants, and for medical therapy for maladies such as sickle cell disease. Luis Echegoyen, president of the American Chemical Society (of which I am a longtime member), says: "It’s going to change the world and how we treat diseases."

I’m sure you readers wonder how many women have won Nobel Prizes in chemistry. Since 1901, 112 prizes have been awarded in chemistry to 186 people. Seven of these winners have now been women. The Nobel is not only a great honor. Charpentier and Doudna will spelt an award of 10 million Swedish kronor. That adds up to about $560,000 each!

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics has also been awarded. Andrea Ghez, a professor at UCLA became only the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, the first winner being the legendary Marie Curie who won in 1903 and who won again in Chemistry in 1911. Ghez’s contribution is the discovery that stars at the center of our galaxy are hurtling through space around a supermassive black hole. Ghez shared half the prize with a German astrophysicist, Reinhard Genzel, who observed the acceleration of stars in the galactic center. The other half of the Physics Prize went to Roger Penrose, a British mathematical physicist who discovered that the existence of black holes is an implication of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, in which gravity is associated with the curvature of space and time.

Three women therefore have earned Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics this year, another major step forward in the recognition of women in major scientific fields.

We have written before about the Ig Nobel Prizes, the 2020 awards being recognized in September. Here are a few of the awards:

Physics: To Ivan Maksymov and Andriy Pototsky for determining, experimentally, what happens to the shape of a living earthworm when one vibrates the earthworm at high frequency.

Entomology: To Richard Vetter, for collecting evidence that many entomologists (scientists who study insects) are afraid of spiders, which are not really insects.

Medicine: To Nienke Vulink, Damian Denys, and Arnold Van Loon, for diagnosing a long- unrecognized medical condition: Misophonia, the distress at other people making chewing sounds.

Psychology: To Miranda Giacomin and Nicolas Rule, for devising a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows.

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A recent obituary in The Washington Post reported the death of Mario Molina, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for demonstrating the threat to the ozone layer posed by chlorofluorocarbons, also known as CFCs. Dr. Molina was a fresh PhD from the University of California at Berkeley when he joined the laboratory of F. Sherwood Rowland at The University of California at Irvine as a postdoctoral fellow in 1973.

Chlorofluorocarbons are very chemically inert, that is they have little reactivity, and though they were accumulating in the atmosphere, they were therefore thought to have no significant environmental impact. They were widely used – in air conditioners, in refrigerators as a coolant, in spray paint and deodorant sprays, and in other aerosol uses.

Their research revealed that these substances placed great risk to the ozone layer, which absorbs ultraviolet rays. Ultraviolet rays have enough energy to cause skin cancer and severely damage the natural environment. At high altitudes these chemicals broke down and released chlorine atoms, which are very good at destroying ozone molecules. The ozone layer is a thin segment of the atmosphere that absorbs ultraviolet radiation, which is high enough in energy to damage the natural environment and cause skin cancer in humans. Not surprisingly these scientists and their findings were not popular with the business world! However, eventually international action and cooperation did curb the use of these chemicals, and the action was ratified by all (!) members of the United Nations. Dr. Molina was a prominent voice during his entire career in promoting his findings on the danger of chlorofluorocarbons to the environment.

Those who deny chemically induced climate change either have a personal (often financial) motive, or they were poor students of chemistry. I taught first year college chemistry 19 years in a row at Bard College in New York, and I worked hard to include practical applications and effects such as this one in my course materials. I believe a good science program always should include relevance to the world around us.

Hard work is continuing to develop a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19. Nine companies that are working to develop a vaccine have signed a pledge "to uphold the integrity of the scientific process" while they develop the vaccine. They have also pledged to "make safety a top priority". Many people have worried that the current administration would promote a too-early approval of a vaccine for political reasons. There have been so many groundless claims against vaccines in the past, and there are people who would readily join the anti-vaccines outcry. It is thus critical that an effective and safe vaccine be developed, not just a quick vaccine.

The government has already spent some $10 billion on COVID-19 vaccine development. Isn’t it a shame how science gets mixed up with politics. It always reminds me of the time when I was invited to run for political office in the town of Red Hook, New York, where I taught chemistry, and conducted water chemistry research in a stream that ran through campus into the Hudson River at Bard College, and I had many community environmental and community activities. I chaired the Dutchess County Environmental Management Council for seven years. I said "no thank you"…and some forty years later I still feel the same way.

Read other articles by Michael Rosenthal