Your Academic Lineage

Over dinner the other night, my uncle and I started comparing and contrasting our academic experiences.  He’s a fascinating person who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in the late 1970’s.

After discussing the finer points of Moore’s Law, and how he agonized over purchasing a 20 MB hard drive in the 1980’s for $400, the substance of the conversation switched.  “Have you ever researched your Ph.D. lineage,” he asked.

“I’ve gone as far back as Breslow,” I replied, completely forgetting that he probably didn’t know this “Breslow” character.

It turns out that several of his doctoral computer buddies had recently taken on this task, many of them somehow descending (academically) from Charles Babbage.

Our discussion prompted me to further examine my background.  I soon discovered that there are several University websites that provide chemistry academic lineage for their faculty members.  Being an organic chemist, I was interested to learn that E.J. Corey worked for John Sheehan (I admit it…I’m nerdly).  In any case, here are some websites I found interesting:

• UT Austin is a really good site to start exploring.  Here, I was able to learn that my roots (through Eric Anslyn) purportedly go through Breslow and Ira Remsen (1870), all the way back to Torbern Bergman (1758).
• My personal favorite website is the lineage posted by North Dakota State University.  Apart from deriving academic lineage all the way back to Nicolo da Lonigo (1453), they’ve complied all of the data/information into a colorful map that would no doubt look good on a faculty member’s wall.
• Some other sites: UMass Amherst, Illinois, UConn, Kentucky, and Michigan State.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Science as Art

Princeton University’s Art of Science contest has produced a gallery of pretty spectacular images of science in action.

This is the fourth Art of Science competition hosted by Princeton University. The 2010 competition drew more than 115 submissions from 20 departments. The exhibit includes work by undergraduates, faculty, research staff, graduate students, and alumni.

The 45 works chosen for the 2010 Art of Science exhibition represent this year’s theme of “energy” which we interpret in the broadest sense. These extraordinary images are not art for art’s sake. Rather, they were produced during the course of scientific research. Entries were chosen for their aesthetic excellence as well as scientific or technical interest.

Interestingly, first second and third prize were determined according to the golden ratio, with first prize earning $250, second prize earning $154.51, and third prize earning $95.49.

Be sure to check out all the images, many of them are quite striking.  Clicking on the images gives a caption explaining what you’re looking at.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

A Few of My Favorite (Chemistry) Things

To carry on with Chemjobber’s Favorite Things list (thanks, btw.  Now I can’t get that silly Dove commercial out of my head), here’s my list of some of my favorite things about chemistry

1. Clickable Sharpies
2. Vanillin TLC stain
3. Pericyclic reactions
4. Dump-and-Stir reactions
5. A set of nested beakers (my set goes from 600 mL down to 10 mL)
6. Review articles
7. PhD comics
8. Short paths (with or without the cow receiver)
9. Playing with liquid nitrogen
10. Dry ice bowling (a lab Olympic event, where you roll a piece of dry ice down our long hallway to see whose goes the farthest)

(Update)

See Also:

• Chemjobber (the original!)
• The Haystack
• Newscripts
• The Sceptical Chymist (+ bonus in comments)
• ScienceBase
• Carbon Based Curiosities
• Chemistry World
• It’s the Rheo Thing
• Jon Edwards
• Endless Possibilities
• Chemist Geek
• The Safety Zone
• Chem-bla-ics
• Chemical Space
• Chemvoice Blog
• scheikundejongens

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Calvin and Hobbes on Chemistry

Ok, so maybe they were originally talking about his math homework… but the joke’s still funny

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Art from molecular models

"Heme", by Alexander Kobulnicky

In my travels here and about online, I recently found the paintings of Alexander Kobulnicky. He paints molecular models of, well, molecules, ranging from the life-giving (“Heme”, to the left) to the fun-related (THC, if that’s your thing) to the life-taking (CO.) The background of the artwork is most noteworthy — Mr. Kobulnicky paints what comes to mind with each different molecule. I think that thorazine is the one with the best background, although psilocybin comes in a close second.

Each painting comes with a little description of the relevant chemistry and an interesting structural note to make a chemist’s heart warm: “These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible.”

While I’m not quite to the art-collecting stage of my life yet, I have to say that I’m pretty enthusiastic about owning one of these someday.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

ACS – San Francisco Meet Up

There have been discussions about doing a meet up at ACS-SF again. The last time the bloggers tried this we got a pretty good showing in 2006 (embarrassing link to my drunken write-up).

If you are in town for the conference and want to meet up to get some food and drinks here is the plan. Fellow bloggers from coronene and everyday scientist will be in the bar at Chevy’s on Monday. We’ll meet there at 6:30 pm and be done before SCI-Mix begins at 8pm.

Restaurant/Bar: Chevys Fresh Mex
Address: 201 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-3154
Time: Monday 6:30 pm to 8:00pm (March 22nd)
Map: From Google, it is literally across the street from Moscone.
If you can’t find us, my cell number is (510)684-8092.

Maz and I will get there early, look for two brown kids with press passes.

If you can’t make it to the meet-up you can still trust Chemistry Blog to give you all the highlights from the ACS conference. For more coverage check out the C&EN blog as well.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Chemistry YouTube Videos – February 2010 Roundup

A student in a chicken suit gets tackled by organic chemistry lecturer Owen Priest at Northwestern University.

An excellent video on methane by the Periodic Table of Videos crew last month.
Safety Note: Samantha “Pants!” Tang is not wearing a lab coat, gloves, and her hair is not fully pulled back.

Also from the Periodic Table of Videos, Sam shows us the Traffic Lights reaction.
Safety Note: Sam does not wear gloves even while working with NaOH powder.
EH&S Note: Throws the solution down the sink.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Android Spectroscopy

I was jealous when I saw Joel write about his boss using his iPhone’s light source for experiments (finally, a really useful science iphone app). I knew I had to one-up him for no other reason then I am a Google Android user. Below is a video of an app I made; the app will scroll through the visible spectrum. In the video the glass contains red wine.

During the video you can see the wine absorbing blue light when the camera pans over the glass for the first time. Next time it pans over the red wine the light is green and still not transparent, but as the light was turning yellow the solution became more transparent. By the end, the light was red and it transmitted through the wine just fine.

If I had an other Android phone on hand I probably could have made a quick and dirty visible spectrometer.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Funny Flasks

During a recent group clean up, I came across these gems drying in an oven.  No one knew where they’d come from or how we obtained them:

Looks like the glass blower just capped some broken-off joints to make tiny flasks.  Although, I gotta say, if you’re going to do chemistry on that small of scale, why not just grab a 1 dram vial?

Merry Christmas, all!  Safe travels and well wishes in the new year

Subscribe to the comments for this post