
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 - srikar
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2014/press.html
======
sveme
I remember one of the first papers coming out from Hell's group using STED
microscopy, showing extremely fine-grained cytoskeleton structure and dynamics
- I was in awe at the beauty and complexity of the resolved structures,
similar to my reaction to images of the first GFP-tagged cytoskeleton
proteins.

These technologies create an intuitive understanding (though we obviously knew
it before) that cells and all living things are self-organized reaction-
diffusion systems - which should lead to a paradigm shift in thinking about
biology, though that hasn't really happened yet.

Sidenote: it's interesting that so many Nobel Prizes in Chemistry in the last
decade or so went to quintessential biological discoveries (same with
Medicine). Alfred Nobel should have included a prize for biology as well, I
guess. Though in the end, borders between disciplines are fluid anyway.

~~~
mrfusion
> cells and all living things are self-organized reaction-diffusion systems

Sounds intriguing. Can you explain more what you mean?

~~~
craigyk
I'm going to guess he means they work via chemistry and exploiting heat in the
system ie brownian ratchets.

~~~
Balgair
Specifically, Gibbs Free Energy (G = Heat - Temp*(Change in Entropy)).
Basically, the energy available is the heat in the system minus some chaotic
stuff (and no, you can't make it better, because physics).

I have a good physics background and what is most supprising to me is how
alive cells are. I initially came into the bio field just as the OP talks
about, with the idea that cells are just tiny chemistry machines that are very
complicated. I figured that eventually, we'd understand the cell from top to
bottom give or take a century. Now.... not so much. Cells, especially
eukaryotes like us and yeast, are just so alive to me. They do weird things
and act on their own. You would think that with enough constraints in the
inputs you would be able to very precisely predict what any one cell would do.
Nope. They go off and do their own thing, replicate in some strange way, find
some food source you never thought they could digest, eat each other, have sex
in some novel way. And it's not just that you are not constraining the system
enough either, or that the system is inherently chaotic and you see improbable
events because of that. They really are alive and want to stay that way. I
know this is not a good explanation, and that real science still has a lot to
say about it. But with my background I felt the way OP did, that it was all
overlapping Gaussian curves and gradients in N-space that makes it look alive.
But now, having seen it up close and watched it all, now I am pretty certain
that life is different somehow.

------
DocSavage
One of the prize winners, Eric Betzig, is the first Nobelist at the relatively
new Janelia Research Center ([http://janelia.org](http://janelia.org)). He has
an interesting backstory, having taken a decade long detour from science.

Betzig says, "there was this big gap on my résumé. So I knew I had to come up
with some intellectual capital to get people to listen to me again."

[http://www.hhmi.org/news/eric-betzig-wins-2014-nobel-
prize-c...](http://www.hhmi.org/news/eric-betzig-wins-2014-nobel-prize-
chemistry)

An interesting video: [http://www.ibiology.org/ibiomagazine/issue-2/eric-
betzig-and...](http://www.ibiology.org/ibiomagazine/issue-2/eric-betzig-and-
harald-hess-developing-palm-microscopy.html)

Here's the original paper describing PALM:
[http://janelia.org/sites/default/files/biblio/field_related_...](http://janelia.org/sites/default/files/biblio/field_related_file/Betzig%20PALM%20Science%202006.pdf)

~~~
mikeyouse
A scientist / photographer I follow on Twitter (Bryan William Jones -
@BWJones) took some pretty terrific shots of Janelia last spring, it's an
amazing facility:

[http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2014/04/janelia-
farm...](http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2014/04/janelia-farm/)

And the on-campus 'housing':

[http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2014/03/room-at-
jane...](http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2014/03/room-at-janelia-
farms/)

~~~
DocSavage
The room in the picture is one of the short-term rooms used almost exclusively
for visitors and conference attendees. Long-term on-campus townhouses and
condos have nice modern designs but not that kind of view :)

------
cing
I thought this was interesting: "Both Betzig and Moerner made their original
pioneering discoveries in industry - Moerner when he was working at IBM in San
Jose and Betzig when he was working in his own private company" \-
[http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2014/10/the-2014-nobe...](http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2014/10/the-2014-nobel-
prize-in-chemistry-and.html)

------
gilgoomesh
The two techniques being awarded are:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STED_microscopy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STED_microscopy)

(Stefan Hell)

and

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoactivated_localization_mic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoactivated_localization_microscopy)

(Eric Betzig and William Moerner)

------
coldcode
This is one reason I wish I had continued in PhD studies in Chemistry, to do
stuff like this. Instead I became a programmer and now read HN.

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jamesash
Paul Bracher of ChemBark gave this field the highest odds of winning, at 7-1.
Interestingly a commenter told him he neglected to put in Hell, about 3 hours
before the announcement was made.
[http://blog.chembark.com/2014/10/08/predictions-for-
the-2014...](http://blog.chembark.com/2014/10/08/predictions-for-
the-2014-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/)

Compare to Thomson Reuters' predictions. [http://thomsonreuters.com/press-
releases/092014/2014-nobel-l...](http://thomsonreuters.com/press-
releases/092014/2014-nobel-laureates-predictions)

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dlau
I'm super glad that Professor Moerner is getting credit where credit is due.
Having taken his intro seminar and interned in his lab my freshmen year, I can
attest he's a really great teacher as well.

On a side note, I hope this added recognition will pump more money into his
lab's equipment. Despite being a physical chemistry lab, their computers were
painfully slow and outdated.

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mrfusion
Could this be useful for CPU lithography? Anyone know?

~~~
troymc
Maybe. The two-laser setup of STED microscopy has similarities to this
recently-developed technique:

[http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140309-26116.html](http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140309-26116.html)

------
leoc
Pics or it didn't happen.

