Matthew Chalmers
Hotels in Lindau don’t do air-con, although I’m pretty sure the Nobel laureates were keeping cool in theirs. So it has been a week of hot, sweaty nights for most of us here. How I longed for a dial with a minus sign on it. Had such technology been installed, I would have whacked that…
I am a science journalist. This is a blog. Does that make me an imposter, a moonlighter, a fraud? Yesterday I took a day out from the Lindau meeting to discuss the relationship between science blogs and science journalism at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists in London. I began by showing a slide…
Three thoughts went through my mind as I listened to yesterday’s panel discussion about the role and future of chemistry for renewable energy. The first was mild horror. The second was intrigue. And the third was disenchantment. The horror Previously, all three winners of the 1995 chemistry Nobel – Sherwood Rowland, Paul Crutzen and Mario…
In three weeks’ time, 280 high-school chemistry students from all over the world will meet in Cambridge in the UK for their most gruelling academic experience to date: the 41st International Chemistry Olympiad. Founded in eastern Europe in the late 1960s, in part to increase contact with other countries, the Olympiad competitions are held every…
Walter Kohn shared the 1998 Nobel prize for chemistry, but in his 86 years he has never taken a university course in the subject. That was not by choice, as Kohn described to me when I caught up with him earlier today: it was due to the Second World War. Although born an Austrian, Kohn…
Last night, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of 2007 chemistry laureate Gerhard Ertl’s gentle voice. Ertl wasn’t in my hotel room, I hasten to add. I had switched on my television and there he was on local network giving an interview… in German, naturally. I managed to identify a few words, such…
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