Word: chemists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...chemistry award went to two Americans, Charles J. Pedersen, 83, now retired from Du Pont, and Donald J. Cram, 68, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and French Chemist Jean-Marie Lehn, 48. The three were cited for their work, dating back as far as the 1960s, in creating artificial molecules that can mimic the behavior of hormones and other organic substances. The lone winner in medicine was Susumu Tonegawa, 48, a Japanese-born molecular biologist at M.I.T. His contribution: showing how a handful of genes in a small number of immune cells turn out a staggering variety...
...seemed downright preposterous to Donald O. Cram of Altadena, Calif., when he got a phone call notifying him that he had just won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Reason: Cram is in the rug-shampooing business. The Swedish Academy of Sciences had rung up the wrong man. Quipped UCLA Chemist Donald J. Cram after hearing about the mix-up: "There is some chemistry involved in carpet cleaning." Cram, Pedersen and Lehn, working independently, shared the award for their work in "host-guest" chemistry. "The basis of our work," explains Lehn, "is the way molecules are able to recognize each other...
...millenniums, the process of ozone production and destruction has been more or less in equilibrium. Then in 1928 a group of chemists at General Motors invented a nontoxic, inert gas (meaning that it does not easily react with other substances) that was first used as a coolant in refrigerators. By the 1960s, manufacturers were using similar compounds, generically called chlorofluorocarbons, as propellants in aerosol sprays. As industrial chemicals, they were ideal. "The propellants had to be inert," says Chemist Ralph Cicerone, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "You didn't want the spray in a can labeled 'blue paint...
Still, as far back as the late 1890s, Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius had begun to fret that the massive burning of coal during the Industrial Revolution, which pumped unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, might be too much of a good thing. Arrhenius made the startling prediction that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would eventually lead to a 9 degrees F warming of the globe. Conversely, he suggested, glacial periods might be caused by diminished levels of the gas. His contemporaries scoffed. Arrhenius, however, was exactly right. In his time, the CO2 concentration was about 280 to 290 parts...
...produce enormous amounts of gas as they digest woody vegetation: a single termite mound can emit five liters of methane a minute. The methane escapes into the atmosphere, where it can not only destroy ozone but also act as a greenhouse gas in its own right. "Termites," says Environmental Chemist Patrick Zimmerman, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, "could be responsible for as much as 50% of the total atmospheric methane budget...