Six Nobel laureates in Physics and Chemistry meet this Monday with scientists and students from the University of Valencia

The Marie Curie Auditorium of the Parc Científic will be the venue for the meeting between the three visiting Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry – Lehn, Sauvage and MacMillan – and an audience made up of students and researchers related to the discipline. This is an activity organized by the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol), a research center of the University of Valencia that has the ‘María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence’ accreditation and which focuses its research on the molecular aspects of nanoscience. The event, open to the public, will begin at 10:30 a.m.

At the same time, in the Graduate Hall of the Higher Technical School of Engineering (ETSE), organized by the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL), there will be a meeting with the American physicist Steven Chu, Nobel Prize in Physics 1997. The scientist, laureate for his work on cooling and trapping atoms by laser, will previously visit the IPL facilities in the Parc Científic of the academic institution, an ERI (Interdisciplinary Research Structure) of the University of Valencia , dedicated to the creation of real images or geo-biophysical parameters from satellite data and remote sensing. The act is also open to the public.

Finally, at 10:30 a.m., the visit to the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC) by physicists Barry Barish and Sheldon Lee Glashow, Nobel Prize winners in Physics in 2017 and 1979, respectively, will begin. This mixed center of the University of Valencia and the Higher Council for Scientific Research is dedicated to research in Nuclear, Particle and Astroparticle Physics, as well as its applications both in Medical Physics and in other fields of Science and Technology. After the visit, a round table meeting will be held between the two scientists and a group of doctoral students.

The visit of the Nobel Prize winners to Valencia takes place within the framework of the Rei Jaume I Awards for the promotion of research, scientific development and entrepreneurship in Spain, which is awarded by the Rei Jaume I Awards Foundation and whose jury includes numerous Nobel Prizes.

During the days of the meeting of the jury in Valencia, each June, the Nobel Prize winners are involved in different activities – colloquiums, talks and visits – organized by research centers and other organizations of the Valencian Community. After the deliberation of the juries, the act of proclamation of the winners is held in the Palau de la Generalitat.

Jean-Marie Pierre Lehn (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1987). His work has especially contributed to the development of supramolecular chemistry. Lehn’s research led in 1968 to the creation of a molecule capable of combining with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the chemical transmitter of signals in the nervous system. He likewise developed a terminology that would become accepted in the nomenclature of organic chemistry: the cavities that exist within molecules he called crypts. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Pedersen and Cram, for the development and use of molecules that interact with high selectivity.

Jean Pierre Sauvage, (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016). He is one of the pioneers of supramolecular chemistry. He published in 1983 the first efficient synthesis of interlocking cyclic molecules called “catenanes”. These molecules were the basis for one of the first molecular machines in which the movement of catenane rings was controlled through electrochemical and photochemical means. One of the rings rotated around the loop created by the other, in a way that could be controlled. He had just built the first nanometer-sized wheel in history. In 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Bernard Feringa and Fraser Stoddart, for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.

David MacMillan (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021). MacMillan is considered a pioneer in the field of organocatalysis. Together with Benjamin List, although independently, he developed asymmetric organocatalysis in 2000, a third type of catalysis that is simpler, cheaper and more ecological as it does not use metals. Since the idea was developed, MacMillan has continued to improve it by carrying out numerous studies. For his work in this field he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2021.

Barry C. Barish (Nobel Prize in Physics 2017) is Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California Riverside. In the field of particle physics, he developed the first experiment with a high-energy neutrino beam at Fermilab and was part of the CERN Superconducting Collider (SSC) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) teams, as well as lead between 2006 and 2013 the project to design the International Linear Collider (ILC). Barish won the Nobel, along with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne, for their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.

Sheldon Lee Glashow (Nobel Prize in Physics 1979). Sheldon Lee Glashow is one of the great figures in world physics. In 1979 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam) for the electroweak unification, that is, for showing how two of the four fundamental forces of nature (the electromagnetic and the weak nuclear force) are actually the same. itself, a single force. He is a skeptic of superstring theory.

Steven Chu (Nobel Prize in Physics 1997). American scientist who, along with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for their independent and pioneering work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light. He was US Secretary of Energy under the Obama administration.