Astumian cited in Quartz article on winners of Nobel Prize in chemistry
R. Dean Astumian, a physics professor at the University of Maine, was quoted in the Quartz article, “The works that won this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry — in terms a high school student would understand.” The 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry recently was awarded to Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University, Ben Feringa of the University of Groningen and Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg, “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines,” according to the article. The most fundamental processes of life, such as translating genetic code to make proteins or ensuring that cellular waste is recycled, require the use of molecular machines, which are 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, and function only on chemical energy, the article states. Stoddart wanted to use chemistry to make similar-sized machines that would do our bidding, Quartz reported. “The entire regime of motion in the molecular world is completely different to in the macroscopic world, and so what people call nanocars have nothing at all to do with the physics of a car,” Astumian told Chemistry World. “It’s like when you look up in the night sky and see a constellation that looks like a bear: We wouldn’t think that the biology of a bear is useful for understanding how the stars in that constellation move relative to one another.” Astumian also was cited in related articles by the Associated Press, Inside Science, Science News and Nature. ABC News carried the AP report.