Marie Curie once said that “Science is about things, and not people”. While this statement is true and profound, the fruits of science are unmistakably linked to their human origins, postmodernist relativism notwithstanding. The scientists who make discoveries are human beings, and they shoulder their share of foibles and successes, petty rivalries and forthcoming generosity,…

When the controversial and talented physicist Edward Teller was doing a PhD. with the great Werner Heisenberg at the University of Leipzig, the question asked at the end of every group meeting that focused on a complex sequence of problems was “Wo ist der Witz?”, supposed to be translated as “What is the point”? but…

Ich müsse dort unbedingt hingehen und mir dafür viel Zeit nehmen, hatte mir Professor Wolfgang Schürer, Vorstand der Stiftung Lindauer Nobelpreisträgertreffen am Bodensee, ans Herz gelegt und mir begeistert nicht nur von den Inhalten der Ausstellung „Entdeckungen – Wasser” berichtet. Schürer hat insbesondere vom architektonischen Konzept der Ausstellung geschwärmt. Aufblasbare Bauten. Dabei dachte ich sofort…

Der Bayerische Wissenschaftsminister Wolfgang Heubisch im Gespräch am Rande des Bayerischen Abends am Donnerstag Abend, 2. Juli 2009, während des Lindauer Nobelpreisträgertreffens.

In some ways Harry Kroto’s talk at Lindau was the most provocative of all because of its emphasis on a rejection, or at least transparent criticism, of religious faith. To get an idea of what students thought about it I buttonholed three graduate students, two from Germany and one from Russia, during lunch on Thursday.…

Today’s talk by MIT chemist Richard Schrock was about a discovery that was applied in part to a long-standing chemical problem. There was no efficient method for forming large molecular rings until Robert Grubbs from Caltech and Schrock arrived on the scene. The method that accomplished this was called olefin metathesis. For their achievement, Schrock…

Für seine Entdeckungen zur Funktion von einzelnen Ionenkanälen in Zellen wurde Erwin Neher 1991 mit dem Nobelpreis für Medizin oder Physiologie ausgezeichnet. In seinem Vortrag am Dienstag sprach Neher über die molekularen Mechanismen der Signalübertragung zwischen Synapsen und erklärte welche Rolle die Freisetzung und Wiederaufnahme von Neurotransmittern hat. Im Interview erinnert er sich an die…

Last year’s chemistry Nobel Prize was one of the most softball predictions ever made for the Nobel Prize. The Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) has become so widely used in chemistry, biology and medicine that it is easy to forget that someone had to discover it and develop the technology. Every year Roger Tsien’s name used…

Lange, sehr lange schon hat mich keiner mehr zu einem Diaabend mit seinen Urlaubsbildern eingeladen. Dabei ist das doch immer recht spannend. Denn an solchen Abenden lernt man selbst beste Freunde noch ein wenig besser kennen.

Waste is not usually a popular topic for polite conversation. Biochemists also avoided it for many years, thinking of protein degradation as a general process that simply gets rid of unwanted biological waste. It was not until Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose discovered the ubiquitin-based protein degradation system that the specificity and centrality…