March 26, 2009

Berkeley Lab at the ACS in Salt Lake City

Contact: Lynn Yarris

Graham Fleming.

Awards symposia were in the spotlight on Tuesday at the national American Chemical Society meeting in Salt Lake City and Berkeley Lab was well represented by a trio of scientists who know more than a little something about award-winning research. Berkeley Lab physical chemist Graham Fleming gave the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award Address on the “Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry of Liquids.” His theme was the dynamics of liquids and polar salvation, but his message was “Time-scales time-scales time-scales!” In discussing his own research over the past 25 years, significant progress was made thanks to the development of increasingly sophisticated optical spectroscopy technologies operating at increasingly faster time-scales. As a prime example, Fleming cited his studies of the enna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) photosynthetic light-harvesting protein, using a spectroscopy technique his group developed that works on a femtosecond time-scale (millionth of a billionth of a second). These studies revealed that nature’s long-held secret behind the ability to instantaneously transfer energy from one molecular system to another during photosynthesis was quantum mechanics.

Richard Saykally.

Berkeley Lab chemist Richard Saykally began his Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry address with a jolt of classical music blasting from an amplified speaker. By way of explanation, Saykally said his experiences teaching freshmen chemistry classes the day before the start of Spring break had prepared him well for giving an end-of-the-day talk. Saykally’s theme was “X-ray absorption spectroscopy of liquid microjets: A new probe of ion hydration.” Again employing various types of music for emphasis, he explained how the incorporation of liquid microjet technology into soft X-ray spectroscopy experiments has provided critical new insights into the nature of ions in liquid water. You would think that if chemists could agree upon anything it would be water but no – there’s been a long-standing argument as to how water molecules arrange themselves in a liquid drop. Saykally and his collaborators, using theory combined with experiments  that capitalized on the ultrabright x-ray beams at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, have provided strong support for what is called the continuum model of water, in which the hydrogen bonds in liquid water are continually breaking and reforming and moving around. His work would seem to have ended the controversy once and for all but then Saykally concluded his talk with another blast of music – the Beatles’ song “Lies!” “Everything I have just told you could be a complete lie,” he said when the music stopped, explaining that interpretations of experimental results are based on theories that for the nature of ions in water remain incomplete.

Darleane Hoffman.

For pure inspiration to students and young scientists who happen to be female, the true highlight of the day surely came from Berkeley Lab nuclear chemist Darleane Hoffman who discussed the progress women have made in chemistry over the past 60 years as personally witnessed by her. Hoffman, a protégé of the late great Glenn Seaborg and only the second woman ever to win the Priestly Award, the ACS’ highest honor, was speaking at a symposium for Mary Singleton, a retired chemist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who was the recipient of this year’s ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences. The room was packed with women who – judging by the applause before and after her talk - were admirers of Hoffman.

When she began her graduate studies in 1948 at Iowa State University, Hoffman said she and other women were referred to as “loophole chemists” because during World War II, the shortage of men resulted in women being recruited into non-traditional fields, including the sciences. Before the war, she noted woman teachers in public schools and universities had to resign if they married. Hoffman was able to take advantage of the fact that the newness of the nuclear chemistry field made it easier to break into and an “old boys club” had yet to be established.

Hoffman presented statistics showing that whereas 60 years ago, less than 14-percent of the students receiving B.S. degrees in chemistry, and only 4-percent of those earning PhDs were women. Today those figures are closer to 51-percent and 34-percent respectively. And yet, she pointed out, today women fill less than 15-percent of tenure-track positions at the top 50 universities!
“Academia has been slow to change,” Hoffman said.

She encouraged women of the ASC to be good mentors to their students and junior colleagues, supportive of their peers and seek out and nominate qualified women and  minorities for awards, honors and advancement.

“Such recognitions lead to positions of leadership and as women we need to create a critical mass in leadership.”