Pittcon Awards

This year the Pittsburgh Conference has tried to use their annual awards to try to make science “more accessible to the people whose lives it affects everyday”. By highlighting the backgrounds and interests of the awardees, they hope to make them more approachable by young scientists and to enable other young people to “put a human face on the word ‘science’”. Therefore we learn that the honoree of the Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award (Milos Novotny, Indiana University) was shut out of his native Czechoslovakia when the USSR invaded in 1968. The winner of the Williams–Wright Award (Heinz Siesler, University of Essen) daydreamed about becoming a game warden in Africa. And that the recipient of the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award (Graham Cooks, Purdue University) is a frustrated body surfer!

The Bomem–Michelson Award was presented to John Rabolt (University of Delaware) for his contributions to vibrational spectroscopy, including a variety of applications of IR and Raman spectroscopy in the field of polymers and macromolecules. In his spare time he makes his own wine, although this has suffered somewhat since his move from California to Delaware on the East Coast of the USA!

Graham Cooks’ Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award is in recognition of his work as probably “the main developer of hybrid mass spectroscopy techniques”. The Williams–Wright Award was given to John Reffner [Spectroscopy Europe 12(1), 6 (2000)]. Heinz Siesler’s Tomas Hirschfeld Award is for his work in the research and development of vibrational spectroscopy as an indispensable tool for academic research and industrial quality control in a wide field of applications ranging from chemistry to agriculture and life sciences to environmental analysis.

Heinz Siesler receives the Tomas Hirshfeld Award from Cynthia Kradjel of sponsors Bran+Luebbe.

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy

Carl Zeiss held an international workshop on fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) in Jena. The aim of the meeting was to increase awareness of this comparatively young technology. FCS is used for pharmaceutical drug screening and, in fundamental biochemical research, for the examination of molecule interactions. It is capable of single-molecule sensitivity and needs sample sizes as low as 1 nL. FCS has permitted the characterisation of the new membrane receptors of major medical importance, e.g. the C-peptide receptor. New possibilities for quantitative analysis in the cellular field are being provided by the combination of imaging techniques, such as laser scanning microscopy, with the analytical FCS technique.

Professor Rudolf Rigler of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Kathy Blanco-Soulas of Carl Zeiss during the FCS Workshop.

The abstracts from the workshop are available on the Zeiss web site at www.zeiss.de/fcsevents.

Internet award

The INTERNETational Award is organised by Pirelli for the spread of Scientific Culture entirely carried out over the Internet. Prizes of up to Euro25,000 are available for multimedia works that are “an original piece of wit or an originally revised work related to scientific and technological subjects”. The Technical Committee must be able to transmit, evaluate and reproduce it through the Internet.

Possible types of work include web sites, hypertexts, texts (Word, PDF, PS, ASCII etc.), project presentations, software or movies, sounds, animations. Further details can be obtained from the Award’s web site: www.pirelliaward.com.

Awards for enterprise

Micromass has received two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. The award for international trade recognises the company’s record of export achievement: sales have grown from approximately £50m in 1995 to in excess of £100m in 1999. The majority of sales are to the life science and pharmaceutical industry sectors. About 90% of turnover is exported, mainly to the USA, Europe and Japan.

The second award is for innovation and recognises the development and commercialisation of the Q-Tof tandem quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer. www.micromass.co.uk.

Bunsen–Kirchhoff award

The German Working Group of Applied Spectroscopy, DASp, honours outstanding achievements in the analytical spectroscopy of atoms or molecules—preferably by younger scientists—by awarding the Bunsen-Kirchhoff-Preis, which is endowed with DM3000 by PerkinElmer, Überlingen, Germany. The winner of the Award in 2000 is Dr Dieter Fischer of the Institute of Polymer Research IPF in Dresden, Germany.

The price was presented on 13 April 2000 at the Analytica Conference in Munich by Dr E.H. Korte, Chairman of the DASp and Dr G. Schlemmer of PerkinElmer. Professor B. Welz, Head of the Jury, explained that the award was given for the innovative transfer of infrared and near infrared spectroscopic techniques to on-line and in-line process analysis of extruding polymer melts. This technology for solvent-free chemical modification of polymers has gained considerable importance due to the demand for diversified properties and processing behaviour of specific materials. Studying the process is impeded by the high pressure and high temperature. Dieter Fischer developed and adapted different types of vibrational spectroscopic gauges and interfaces, allowing him to monitor the modification process at the relevant positions of the extruder and to determine quantitatively components and additives.

Since 1990, the DASp has awarded a Bunsen-Kirchhoff-Preis to 13 scientists with the majority of these coming from abroad. The price is being re-announced for 2001 for an outstanding spectroscopic contribution by a younger scientist and will be sponsored again by PerkinElmer. Details on how to make a nomination can be found at http://barolo.ipc.uni-tuebingen.de/extern/dasp.

Dr Ernst-Heiner Korte (ISAS Department Berlin, E-mail: korte@isas-berlin.de)

Innovation award

A team of scientists from PS Analytical has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Innovation Team Award 1999 for an innovative new way of detecting the presence of mercury in petrochemicals.

The work which resulted in the presentation of the award was centred around mercury determinations in petrochemical plants. When petrochemicals are processed, they often contain small amounts of mercury, either as vapour or bound to the petrochemicals themselves. This can result in damage to the plant, requiring closure and repair. If the mercury can be detected, steps could be taken to prevent this damage, but it had not been possible to measure levels of mercury in this situation reliably. The problem was highlighted by Petronas Gas of Malaysia, and, following discussions, Petronas sent a student on study leave to work in collaboration with scientists from PS Analytical and the University of Plymouth.

The winning team (left to right): Keith Mison (PSA), Mike Foulkes (University of Plymouth), Peter Stockwell (PSA) and Richard Simons (PSA).

Technology previously developed for the detection of mercury in stack emissions was adapted for the new application. The petrochemical samples are heated until they become gases, and passed through a gold “trap” which retains the mercury complexes. The total amount of mercury can then be measured. However, further information is still needed to develop a successfull removal strategy for the mercury. The “speciation profile” was determined by a combination of atomic fluorescence measurement and a separation technique such as GC.

RSC Millennium Fellows

Eight of the most eminent chemists in the UK have become the Millennium Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry at a special ceremony in Cambridge on 3 July 2000. All of the Millennium Fellows have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The Millennium Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry are: Professor Archer Martin CBE FRS HonFRSC, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1952. He pioneered the modern systems of chromatography. Dr Frederick Sanger OM CH CBE FRS, one of the very few people to win two Nobel Prizes—one in 1958 for determining the chemical make-up of insulin and the second in 1980 for discovering how to sequence DNA. Dr Max Perutz OM CH CBE FRS, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. He discovered the structure of haemoglobin. Lord George Porter Kt OM FRS HonFRSC, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1967, developed the technique of flash photolysis. Sir John Cornforth AC CBE FRS CChem FRSC, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1975. His work was the first to demonstrate the importance of stereochemistry in biological reactions. Sir Aaron Klug OM HonFRSC, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982. His use of the technique of X-ray crystallography has allowed us for the first time to see the structure of many complex and important biological molecules. Professor Sir Harold Kroto FRS CChem FRSC, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996 for his work on fullerenes. Professor Sir John Walker FRS HonFRSC, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997. His work showed how the body creates the chemical molecule ATP.