ChemCafé

To conclude the ISMSC 2009 overview, let’s sum up what amazing things were presented in the last days… We had a really funny talk from Prof. J. Sessler – great cartoons, but great science as well! Then Prof. L. Lindoy presented nice ‘boomerang complexes’ – interesting name for research produced in Australia – as well as weird topologies, Prof. J. Reek tried to ask the audience about a catalyst’s activity, and got only a few voters, and then Prof. P. Gale mentioned during his talk a molecule called prodigiosin… after some investigation, it turns out it is a pigment produced by certain bacteria… (not too prodigious in my opinion).

Among the few ladies who presented talks during this symposium, the most amazing was the performance of Prof. H. Sleiman about incredible DNA assemblies. It is not exagerate to say the audience was stunned by the impressive pictures and videos displayed during this (super high-speed) presentation! In the same morning we had Nobel Prize Jean-Marie Lehn giving a philosophico-chemical lecture on adapative, almost darwinian, chemistry.

In the afternoon we attended a special session dedicated to six professors celebrating their 65th birthday in 2009. This session was chaired by the very funny Prof. H. Ringsdorf, who had great cartoons and quotes, but who also reminded the audience of the time when people were giving presentations with the help of transparencies and overhead projectors ! We then had presentations given by Profs Javier de Mendoza, Seiji Shinkai (who, as retired now, occupies simulataneously four different positions), Roeland Nolte (who found time to prepare a talk in spite of being main organiser of the whole conference), Julius Rebek (who fears to be killed by Barry Trost as his chemistry is highly non-atom-economical), Peter Tasker (who introduced us to the subject of extractive hydrometallurgy) and finally Jean-Pierre Sauvage (who is still considered as an inorganic chemist despite ligands syntheses involving more than 30 steps).

Prof JKM Sanders opened the next morning with a neat presentation, concluded by a very interesting advice: “expect, welcome and search carefully for the unexpected”! Prof S. Otto then explained why sometimes, chemistry requires to be “shaken, not stirred” and Prof. L. Cronin was the first people I ever saw who cited Kylie Minogue in a talk (he went too fast on it, unfortunately, I had no time to write the quote on my notebook). But his talk was quite impressive as well, dealing with huge systems obtained through self-assembly.

I finally must pay tribute to the great conference dinner we had… Dutch really know how to welcome guests (host-guest chemistry at its best…) and the result was a sparse audience in the next morning, as well as a lesser motivation in making notes… Remarkable was the talk given by K. Suzuki, a PhD student from Prof M. Fujita – and remarkable as well the possibility offered to a PhD student to present his work at this conference! And finally, after the presentation of Prof I. Goldberg, a discussion about the general question ‘what is it good for?’ a remarkable answer was given by Prof. Izatt, as another question: ‘What a new-born baby is good for?’ – I should remember this one for next time some friends of mine ask me why people do research…