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KNOWLEDGE SHARING
Walter Kohn, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998 for his development of the density functional theory, enjoys a discussion with young scientists in Lindau.
SECRETS OF SCIENTIFIC SUCCESS Young chemists gathered in Germany to get career advice from NOBELISTS ALEX SCOTT, C&EN LONDON
FOR ONE WEEK THIS JULY, Lindau, a
medieval town on a small island on Lake Constance, in southern Germany, was host to more than 600 young scientists from around the world. The scientists, a mix of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from about 80 countries, made the journey to listen to and learn from 34 Nobel Laureates, their heroes from the world of science. The meeting focused specifically on chemistry. The laureates are drawn to the annual, weeklong meeting not just to lecture but to pass on advice and guidance on how to approach a career in science. While the laureates meeting in Lindau this year
have an average age of 77, the young scientists are in their 20s and 30s. The meeting had a profound effect on some young scientists including Ju Yuel Baek, a South Korean carbohydrate chemist who works at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids & Interfaces, in Germany. Before the Lindau meeting, Baek, 36, didn’t think he could become a laureate. But after just a couple of days in Lindau, he had changed his mind. “I think I can,” he told C&EN. Although Baek gained a new outlook on science from his participation in the Lindau meeting there is a danger that the laureates could miss the mark with other young scientists because the advice they CEN.ACS.ORG
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offer could be dated or even irrelevant. “In research I am not sure it’s a good idea for the young scientists to listen to the advice of their elders. We get stuck in ruts,” said 80-year-old Robert F. Curl Jr., the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Natural Sciences and University Professor Emeritus at Rice University, in Houston. Curl became a Nobel Laureate for his codiscovery of fullerenes, the carbon cage compounds, in 1996. There are clear differences between the era when Curl was setting out as a young scientist in the 1950s and that of today’s young scientists. “A recurrent theme of the talks has to be the big difference between when
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century French artist Auguste Rodin’s carving of a sculpture from stone. Whether or not the young scientists take up the advice is of course another matter. The audience at Lindau appeared rapt. Ask 10 or so young scientists, as C&EN did, whether they benefited from the event and all will tell you that it was a positive—if not perspectivechanging—experience. For Evelyn Auyeung, a 25-year-old Ph.D. student at Northwestern University working in the field of nanoparticle assembly into superlattices, the meeting was revelatory. The most important advice for Auyeung was dispatched by Martin Chalfie, who was one of three awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008. During a discussion session, Chalfie recalled how early in his career he left research to become a teacher only to give scientific research a second go. “When I was in college, although I enjoyed research, I was unsure of whether science was the right career path for me. It is reassuring for me to know that a successful career in science is possible even for those who did not play with the proverbial chemistry kit as children,” Auyeung said. Auyeung rejects the notion that the laureates’ thinking is stuck in another era. “Their insight into how they’ve adapted remains valuable to young researchers today,” she said. “At Lindau, we learned that there is no easy or straightforward path to success. The biggest thing I gained from Lindau is perspective,” she added. Vera Krewald, a 26-year-old German Ph.D. student, also found the Lindau meeting provided something extra. Meeting other young scientists and listening to laureates talking on a broad range of topics reinforced Krewald’s perspective on her own career. It “somehow confirmed to me that I made the right choice in taking up computational chemistry and spectroscopy,” she said. Bert Sakmann, a cell physiologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991, is the only person in the event’s 63-year history to have also attended the Lindau lectures as a young scientist. Even if none of this year’s young scientists follow in Sakmann’s footsteps, the Lindau meeting succeeded in encouraging them to be the best they can be. ◾ ALEX SCOTT/C&EN
I was coming up as a young person and these people. When I came up you were hoping to discover something. Nowadays you’ve got to predict what you are going to discover, which is a pretty high hurdle,” said Curl with a wry smile. Research funding is also now harder to secure and its focus more restricted compared with recent decades. “Research is meant to generate something for mankind,” Curl said. “I don’t have any objection at all to directed research, but on the other hand because of political reasons there is less and less opportunity for research that is POSITIVE AMBITION laureates offered nuggets of Baek (right) didn’t driven by curiosity.” advice on how to approach cerbelieve that he could Robert H. Grubbs, profestain scientific challenges. One one day become a sor of chemistry at California of the threads of advice running Nobel Laureate until Institute of Technology, who through many of the presentahe attended the Lindau meeting. was awarded the 2005 Nobel tions was that the young sciPrize in Chemistry for develentists should go where their oping the metathesis method curiosity takes them. “There in organic synthesis, is also acutely aware are many messages, but all boil down to of the greater opportunities for funding one: Go into science if you are curious and research that were available to him in the have passion for it. If not, find something post-Sputnik era compared with what is on else. It’s not that the whole world has to offer to young scientists today. become scientists,” said Yonath, whose But whatever apparent incompatibilities studies of the structure and function of the there may be between the laureates and the ribosome have since led to approaches for young scientists, the reality is that the lauovercoming antibiotic resistance. Yonath reates don’t just make the event work; they is only the fourth woman to be awarded the make it fizz, pop, and come alive. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Marie Curie, Curie’s daughter Irène Joliot-Curie, THERE IS A HIGH-ENERGY buzz around and the English chemist Dorothy Crowfoot the conference hall. Talk with the likes of Hodgkin. Curl, Grubbs, and Ada E. Yonath, who was A key piece of advice from Curl was, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in “Overcome your fear. This is something I 2009, and it quickly becomes apparent always had difficulty doing.” He added that that they have perspective on scientific the late Richard E. Smalley, Curl’s research investigation that transcends their own colleague with whom he shared the 1996 fields of expertise and own eras. Many of Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was “fearless” in the laureates may be advanced in age, but his approach to science. watch them on the Lindau stage and it is “You’ve got to let the kids know they can obvious that they also have an extraorpull it off too,” said Grubbs, 71, whose lecdinary ability to convey their passion for ture style is fast paced and packed with ideas science with clarity, enthusiasm, and no and philosophy about science. Blink while little energy. Grubbs is lecturing and you miss a gem. Typically, the laureates gave their Lindau Meanwhile, in a way that typified the lectures in a way that laid out their scienlaureates’ blend of science and philosophy, tific journey: how curiosity led them to Jean-Marie Lehn, who shared the Nobel look closely at anomalies, how serendipity Prize in Chemistry in 1987 for developing played a role in their work, and how the molecules that recognize each other, urged research that led to their Nobel Prizes in the young scientists to be proactive: “The many cases was a relatively small part of a book of dreams is not just to be read but long and varied career. to be written,” he said. He also likened the While delivering scientific lectures, the discovery of scientific evidence to the 19th-
