Featured series 
Tag: Chemistry
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Nation & World
Kou is shaking up the world of statistics
Harvard statistics professor Samuel Kou, now 34, grew up in Lanzhou, a city in China’s mountainous northwest near the border with Inner Mongolia. The altitude there is higher than Denver’s storied mile, and earthquakes rumble through town several times a year.
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Nation & World
New label-free method tracks molecules and drugs in live cells
A new type of highly sensitive microscopy developed by Harvard researchers could greatly expand the limits of modern biomedical imaging, allowing scientists to track the location of minuscule metabolites and…
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Nation & World
Scientists explore nature’s designs
As a graduate student, Harvard physical chemist Joanna Aizenberg acquired a passionate curiosity about — of all things — sponges. She particularly liked the ones made of glass, whose apparent fragility belied the fact that they could withstand terrific pressure in the deep sea.
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Nation & World
Quantum computers could excel in modeling chemical reactions
Quantum computers would likely outperform conventional computers in simulating chemical reactions involving more than four atoms, according to scientists at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Haverford College. Such improved ability to model and predict complex chemical reactions could revolutionize drug design and materials science, among other fields.
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Nation & World
NYU chemist Robert Shapiro decries RNA-first possibility
Back in the depths of time, an event almost miraculously improbable happened, creating a long, unlikely molecule. And life arose on Earth. Or, if you prefer, back in the depths of time, in a soup of small, relatively common molecules, an unknown chemical reaction occurred, sustained itself, replicated … and life arose on Earth.
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Nation & World
Hansjörg Wyss gives $125M to create institute
Engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, M.B.A. ’65 has given Harvard University $125 million to create the Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
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Nation & World
NIH selects nine Pioneers, Innovators from Harvard
Nine Harvard faculty members are among 47 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was recognized Monday (Sept. 22) with the announcement of two grant programs through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Nation & World
Samuel Kou appointed professor of statistics
Samuel Kou, whose modeling of nanoscale processes within molecules has opened up important new frontiers at the intersection of statistics and chemistry, has been appointed professor of statistics in Harvard…
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Nation & World
Jeremy R. Knowles
Jeremy R. Knowles, an eminent chemist and longtime leader of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, died today (April 3) at his home in Cambridge, after a struggle with cancer.
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Nation & World
Jeremy Knowles, eminent chemist, Harvard leader, 72
SUBHEAD By XXXXXXXXX Harvard News Office –> Jeremy R. Knowles, an eminent chemist and longtime leader of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, died April 3 at his home in…
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Nation & World
Of flies and fish
During her schooldays in 1950s Germany, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard rarely did her homework. In 1995, she won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine. Volhard is now director of the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, where, decades before, she had been an undistinguished biochemistry undergraduate. She was at Harvard this week (March…
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Nation & World
Frank Henry Westheimer
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on December 11, 2007, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late Frank Henry Westheimer, Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Westheimer was one of the key figures in twentieth-century chemistry.
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Nation & World
Chemistry Department creates Fieser Fellowship
Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB) has announced the creation of the Mary Fieser Postdoctoral Fellowships Program to promote the recruitment, development, and mentorship of women and underrepresented groups in areas across the chemical sciences.
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Nation & World
Lava provides window on early Earth
Researchers at Harvard and the University of Hawaii believe they’ve resolved a long-standing controversy over the roots of islands — volcanoes in the middle of tectonic plates — showing that the islands’ lava provides a window into the early Earth’s makeup.
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Nation & World
New laser nanoantenna shows unprecedented detail
In a stunning feat of nanotechnology engineering, researchers from Harvard University have demonstrated a laser with a wide-range of potential applications in chemistry, biology, and medicine. Called a quantum cascade (QC) laser antenna, the device is capable of resolving the chemical composition of samples, such as the interior of a cell, with unprecedented detail.
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Nation & World
Nanowire makes own electricity
Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well.
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Nation & World
Elkan R. Blout
In the world of scientific research and development, few investigators could be considered “renaissance” persons, capable of seemingly integrating the various realms of this world – – industry, academe, government and public service. Elkan Blout was such a renaissance person.
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Nation & World
Frank H. Westheimer, major figure in 20th century chemistry, dies at 95
Frank H. Westheimer, Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, at Harvard University and one of the key figures in 20th century chemistry, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on April 14. He was 95.
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Nation & World
Elkan Blout, former HSPH academic affairs dean, 87
Elkan Blout, a former dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), National Medal of Science winner, and a leading contributor to the development of instant film, died on Dec. 20, 2006, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The cause was pneumonia. He was 87.
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Nation & World
Nanowire arrays can detect signals along individual neurons
Opening a whole new interface between nanotechnology and neuroscience, scientists at Harvard University have used slender silicon nanowires to detect, stimulate, and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons.
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Nation & World
HMS researchers find how gold fights arthritis
Gold compounds have been used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases for more than 75 years, but, until now, how the metals work has been a…
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Nation & World
Scientists create high-speed nanowire circuits
Chemists and engineers at Harvard University have made robust circuits from minuscule nanowires that align themselves on a chip of glass during low-temperature fabrication, creating rudimentary electronic devices that offer…
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Nation & World
Repairing DNA damage
Scientists have discovered some fascinating details about a handy repair service in your genes that that not much is known about. It searches through the huge amounts of DNA in…
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Nation & World
Brighter model for global warming
To environmental chemist Scot Martin, chemistry is a way of understanding the Earth and some of its most pressing problems. From global warming to heavy metal pollution in groundwater, Martin,…
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Nation & World
A strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body
A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within…
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Nation & World
Young stars in Orion may solve mystery of our solar system
Scientists who study how our solar system formed have been hard pressed to explain the presence of extremely unusual chemical isotopes found in ancient meteoroids orbiting the Earth. The isotopes…
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Nation & World
Black silicon: A new way to trap light
Eric Mazur, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and his students were studying what kinds of new chemistry can occur when lasers shine on metals, like…