The Lion in Winter

Source: ACIEE | Karen Ostertag

Carl Djerassi + Jeffrey Seeman + Angewandte Chemie
= Must-read material.

Just when you thought you couldn't get enough of Carl's 90th birthday festivities, a new collection of personal quotes has appeared online this week. Djerassi - chemist / author / poet / provocateur - does not disappoint. For the more chemically-inclined, it's full of "Didja know?" moments - for instance, Woodward, Djerassi, and Tishler all submitted syntheses of cortisone to JACS within 3 weeks of each other!

The bulk of the text explores Djerassi's feisty, garrulous backlog of quotables. Here's just a sampling:

On his stamp: "Since 2005, people in Austria - by now thousands - have been licking the back of my head"

On publication: "You owe it to the students and those who collaborate with you...you persuaded them to do it, and obviously at the time that it was worth doing. Presumably, if they completed it, it was good enough to be published."

On community: "Scientists operate within a tribal culture whose rules, mores and quirks generally not communicated through specific lectures and books, but rather are acquired through a form of intellectual osmosis in a mentor-disciple relationship"

The rest run the gamut from social movements (performance-enhancing drugs, the Pill, sex, schadenfreude) to deeply personal hurts (professional exclusion, his daughter's suicide), and end on a peaceful, affirming story concerning the motto of the Djerassi ranch (SMIP, but I won't spoil the secret...)

Give it a read, it's worth every minute.

Jeff, Chemistry Historian

This special entry, #42 (secret to life, the Universe, and everything, coincidence?) in the #ChemCoach blog carnival, comes from a personal hero of mine. Please put your hands together for...

My favorite "profile" of the series:
John D. Roberts, engaged in debate
Source: ACS Publications | Jeff Seeman

...Dr. Jeff Seeman!

Jeff currently works as a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the University of Richmond. Perhaps you know him from his long career as a chemist at Phillip Morris. Or perhaps from his interviews of famous organic chemists for the ORGN Centennial Symposium. But I know Dr. Seeman best as the editor of the ACS autobiographical series Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams.

Ever read it? Through PPD, Jeff compiled and edited autobiographies from eminent chemists over ~20 years. Bill Johnson. Carl Djerassi. Arthur Birch. Ernest Eliel. Andrew Streitweiser. Bruce Merrifield. Koji Nakanishi. The list goes on and on.

In addition to recounting their scientific careers, the scientists' charge involved telling stories about how they became chemists - a perfect fit for this carnival!

On a more personal note, I had found a treasure trove of these books, sitting in a gleaming blue row in a corner of our science library, during the darkest days of grad school. Paging through, I developed a kind of confidence, a realization that many of these famous folks had once been in my shoes. If they could do it, so could I. If you haven't read the books, I'd highly recommend them to any prospective young chemist.

Ever humble and pragmatic, Jeff has decided that I can best tell his story through his work (lightly edited):

Dr. Jeff Seeman
Credit: ACS local section

"...You ask about me.  And I would much prefer to tell you about...my latest big project.  I also believe your followers will find a blog about this far more useful and interesting! [snip]

The Chemical Record is a Wiley-VCH journal published with the Chemical Society of Japan.  It has a rather substantial impact factor of ca. 5.

[snip] A more complete description of the project and a rich discussion of autograph books can be found in an essay* that I've written along with the first segment of this project:  It is open-access, as is the entire project for at least three years.

The actual issue in TCR.

The Nozoe interactive website.

As for me, this project follows my heart in encouraging our chemistry community to go beyond great science and think about science as a human endeavor and to cherish our rich participation in this wonderful community of ours. (emphasis mine)

I hope that my "submission" to you more than meets your anticipations."

(SAO here) - Thanks again, Jeff. It really made my day.

*Here's an introductory essay Jeff wrote for the Nozoe Autograph Books Project. I hear through the grapevine that Ash will soon write about them on Curious Wavefunction, so keep an eye out!

Art Antics

In case you hadn't heard, B.R.S.M. is running a pictorial carnival of sorts. His angle? To celebrate the upcoming 66th birthday of venerable chemist - and serial "chemical artist" - K.C. Nicolaou. In keeping with the spirit of the game, we were asked to limit our artistic efforts to the same five molecules. Shown below are my (admittedly ridiculous) entries. 

Vancomycin: Profiles, Pathways, and Space Monsters
(with apologies to Jeff Seeman)

Really, it's what I'd always expected to see published...
(The mustache substitutes for the bridging isopropylidene!)