The Sceptical Chymist - Details

Myunghyun Paik Suhis in theDepartment of ChemistryatSeoul National Universityin Korea, where she works on functional coordination polymers - including porous metal-organic frameworks that can be applied in the storage and separation of organic molecules and gases.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I’ve enjoyed science and mathematics since I was an elementary student. While studying these topics, I would forget about the whole world. I found extreme happiness by solving difficult problems. I wanted to be a mathematician or a scientist - I chose to be a chemist because I thought chemists can solve human problems in a more direct way than other sciences.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be - and why?

A violinist. I started playing violin at the age of 6 and I loved it. I was recognized as a good violinist and I considered becoming a professional, but my parents did not want me to be a musician.Even though I never became a professional violinist, I still enjoy playing music.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I am developing smart solid materials that can selectively and efficiently capture carbon dioxide from industry flue gas. I hope that these materials can be applied in industry to capture carbon dioxide, which will contribute to solving the problem of global warming.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with - and why?

I would like to have dinner with Albert Einstein, who is a genius and also a violinist. I am fascinated by his exceptionally high IQ and EQ.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab - and what was it?

My last experiment in the lab was about 6 years ago when a student measured the magnetic susceptibility of a compound. He had to prepare a sample with great care, and I worked with him in the lab for an entire week.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one music album would you take with you?

I would take a bible and an album of Viotti violin concertos (# 22 and 23) with me. I would take the time to re-write the whole bible, which I believe would enhance my religious mind. When listening to Viotti violin concertos, all my emotions burst out. Life would not be boring even on a desert island.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Professor George Whitesides. I am curious to hear what such an active chemist would have done if he had chosen something other than chemistry.

As a synthetic chemist the first thing I usually want to know about a chemical compound is “How did they make it?” and then “How do they know they made it?” However, synthetic procedures and characterization data for compounds are often found lurking in an article’s Methods section or in the depths of the Supplementary Information.

Not any more! We are now testing a new feature for theNature Chemistrywebsite that displays the procedure for making a chemical compound on its compound information page.Our first exampleof this can be found inHoward Colquhoun’s articlein the August issue ofNature Chemistrywhich islive online today.

Compound pages – which display lots of otheruseful informationabout the structure – are easily accessed by clicking on hyperlinked bold compound numbers in the HTML version of an article. Where the paragraphs of text describing the synthesis and characterization of the compound are provided by an author, they will be displayed under the heading “Synthetic Procedure” on these pages. From the procedure you can view any other structures mentioned by bold number and navigate to their compound pages by hovering or clicking on the hyperlinked numbers respectively. This makes it really easy to follow the chain of the reaction you are interested in.

Following the links at the top of the compound pages you can still jump back to the article to find the full experimental details in the Methods section or Supplementary Information. We also encourage authors to provide us with raw data files –such as CIF files– which can be displayed on the compound pages.

We hope that including synthetic procedures and data on the compound pages makes it faster to browse for what you are looking for. Pulling all this information together in the article HTML will not only feedOSCAR the journal-eating robot, but also make life easier for over-workedlab-ratsbench-monkeyspost-graduate students.

Have a play and see what you think - this is only at quite an early stage, so any feedback would be gratefully received.

Laura

Laura Croft (Technical Editor,Nature Chemistry)

There were many great talks yesterday at the Belgian Organic Synthesis Symposium, but as I have time to describe just one, I’ll mentionEric Jacobsen’s tour de force about hydrogen-bonding catalysis. This seems to be an area that’s really kicking off right now.

His thesis is that hydrogen-bonding catalysts shouldn’t be thought of in the way that chemists tend to conceptualize asymmetric catalysts in general - that is, as molecules or complexes that bind to substrates in order to block the approach of reactants from certain directions. Instead, he made the case that hydrogen-bonding catalysts act more like enzymes, activating and/or stabilizing the substrate (or the substrate's transition state)through hydrogen bonding. That’s not to say that steric interactions are unimportant, clearly they still have an impact. But to fully understand how hydrogen-bonding catalysts work, he argues that you need to look first at the stabilizing effects of non-covalent interactions.

He backed this up with many case studies of hydrogen-bonding catalysts from his own lab (such as those for Claisen rearrangements, polyene cyclizations and Strecker-like reactions), in each case providing a detailed analysis of how each catalyst works. It’s all beautiful stuff, and you find some it in JACS (see the abstract for his analysis of the Strecker reactionhere).

Today is the last day of the meeting, so this is where I’ll sign off from Belgium. I’ve only been able to discuss a handful of the presentations, but there were many other highlights at this meeting. I can only encourage organic chemists out there to come to the next meeting in the BOSS series, in 2012 - you won’t be disappointed.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Senior Editor,Nature)