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How organocatalysis won the Nobel prize

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Jamie Durrani tells the story of how two young upstarts, Ben List and David MacMillan, created a whole new field of catalysis

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First malaria vaccine approved as hopes raised for new, better ones

By

Mosquirix prevents just 30% of severe malaria cases in young children prompting a guarded welcome

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Timmers’ towers and Straus’ flasks

By

The revolutionary system that made labs much less likely to go up in flames

Nobel prizes 2021

News

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US programme targeting researchers with China links crumbling under intense scrutiny

2021-10-14T14:30:00+01:00

Academics are demanding that the Justice Department end the ‘China Initiative’ as cases collapse amid accusations of racial profiling

Liran and Lior Akavia seated in front of a Seebo sign

Predicting and preventing production losses with AI

2021-10-14T13:30:00+01:00

Seebo’s machine learning technology helps chemical manufacturers get deep insight into their processes

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Quotas for women or based on ethnicity ruled out for the Nobel prizes

2021-10-14T08:30:00+01:00

Head of the body that awards the Nobel calls the small number of females Nobel laureates ‘sad’, but says quotas are the wrong approach

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New antiviral impresses against Covid-19

2021-10-08T13:28:00+01:00

Merck & Co and Ridgeback’s molnupiravir reduces risk of hospitalisation and death, and may work against other coronaviruses

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Longest-serving National Institutes of Health chief, Francis Collins, to step down

2021-10-07T14:14:00+01:00

Head of $41 billion US biomedical research agency will depart at the end of the year

Research

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Tiny shear forces have big effect on protein reactions

2021-10-15T08:35:00+01:00

Proteins react faster under the forces they experience when they squeeze through blood vessels

An image of a stick structure and, in its centre, the spherical and bulbous shapes of the orbital representations in white and blue

Uranium’s strong covalent bond breaks periodic table predictions

2021-10-13T13:30:00+01:00

Actinide’s unusual covalency could explain its ability to fix nitrogen

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Exploiting evolution to explore chemical space shows promise for drug discovery

2021-10-13T08:30:00+01:00

Using molecular trees – similar to family trees – chemists could predict how products will evolve to make new molecules

A backlit, closeup photo of a drop of water as it hits a surface, viewed from below. The drop appears as large circle covering most of the photo, with smaller droplets scattering away from it.

First snapshots of ionised water’s fleeting radical–cation pair

2021-10-12T13:30:00+01:00

Ultrafast electron diffraction spots hydroxyl–hydronium complex before it separates a hundred quadrillionth of a second later

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Möbius metallacycles show their aromaticity with textbook reactivity

2021-10-11T08:30:00+01:00

First electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions with unusual molecules

Voice of the Royal Society of Chemistry

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How polluting is plastic?

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Recycling Webinar image index

Is chemical recycling of plastics the future?

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Nature and mental wellbeing – Building a better chemistry culture

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Should we design biodegradable plastics?

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  • How polluting is plastic?

  • Is chemical recycling of plastics the future?

  • Nature and mental wellbeing – Building a better chemistry culture

  • Should we design biodegradable plastics?

Significant figures

Celebrating science's forgotten heroes

A framed portrait of Evelyn Hickmans

The lifesaving work of Evelyn Hickmans

An framed portrait of Clara Immewahr

Clara Immerwahr – out of her husband’s shadow

An illustrated portrait of Kathleen Culhane Lathbury

Kathleen Culhane Lathbury – an industrial pioneer

An image showing a framed portrait of Mabel FitzGerald

Mabel FitzGerald and the mystery of oxygen sensing

A framed portrait of Polly Porter

Polly Porter, crystallography pioneer

An illustrated portrait of Mary Sherman Morgan

Mary Sherman Morgan: The best kept secret in the space race

A framed portrati of Julia Lermontova

Julia Lermontova: an early pioneer

An illustrated portrait of Margarita Salas

Margarita Salas: the marquesa of molecular biology

A framed portrait of Sylvia Stoesser

Sylvia Stoesser – the first female chemist at Dow

An image showing a framed portrait of Martin Gouterman

Martin Gouterman: the gay man behind the four-orbital model

  • The lifesaving work of Evelyn Hickmans

  • Clara Immerwahr – out of her husband’s shadow

  • Kathleen Culhane Lathbury – an industrial pioneer

  • Mabel FitzGerald and the mystery of oxygen sensing

  • Polly Porter, crystallography pioneer

  • Mary Sherman Morgan: The best kept secret in the space race

  • Julia Lermontova: an early pioneer

  • Margarita Salas: the marquesa of molecular biology

  • Sylvia Stoesser – the first female chemist at Dow

  • Martin Gouterman: the gay man behind the four-orbital model

More...

Features

INDEX 00011734

Four years of chemistry preprints

By

Nina Notman takes stock of how preprint severs have settled into the chemistry community

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What’s wrong with research culture?

By

A knotty mess of problems affects people doing academic research in the UK. Rachel Brazil tries to untie the tangle

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The name’s bond, chemical bond

By Kathryn Harkup

Kathryn Harkup explores the poisons – real and fictional – used in Bond films

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Experimenting in a pandemic

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Chemistry teachers have faced extraordinary challenges in preparing and running practicals in the past 18 months. Clare Sansom investigates how they have fared

Upcoming webinars

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How polluting is plastic?

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Sublime precursors: how modelling organometallics at surfaces drives innovation in materials processing

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Smarter experimentation for engineers and scientists

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High capacity batteries

Optimising battery performance through materials characterisation

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  • Find robust operating points using JMP’s Simulation Experiment tool

  • How polluting is plastic?

  • Sublime precursors: how modelling organometallics at surfaces drives innovation in materials processing

  • Smarter experimentation for engineers and scientists

  • Unlock the potential of definitive screening designs to drive your projects forward

  • Optimising battery performance through materials characterisation