“This year’s is about how the optical microscope became a .” Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences permanent secretary Staffan Normark.
After the formal announcement, Sven Lidin, chair of the Nobel chemistry committee, explained the
“Because we can see individual macromolecules moving about in a living cell, we can study chemistry at a single-molecule level and in real life. And this is very, very important to chemistry because chemistry has traditionally been about studying a large number of molecules and the effect that they have. Here we can look at a single molecule as it is active in a chemical system. That means that rare events can be studied in a very different way. Reactions can be studied as they happen, not as the end result but actually as they take place. It opens entirely new possibilities for chemistry and for biochemistry.”
For a more in-depth listen about the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, look for the Science Talk podcast later this morning.—Steve Mirsky
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