UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Nobel Prize winners to visit Bristol
Two winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry are to visit Bristol within a month of each other. On March 25 Professor Jean-Marie Lehn will be one of five international speakers to talk at a prestigious conference being organised by Bristol University's School of Chemistry.
Professor Lehn, from the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, was one of three people to share the 1987 Nobel Prize for his work on man-made molecules that mimic important biological processes.
Chemists are in the business of making tailored molecules with a variety of functions. Some are designed to mimic nature by interacting with biological systems, others act as new medicines like antibiotics, while some can be designed to have new electrical properties suitable for use in flat television screens.
The chemical industry is greatly interested in the cutting-edge work being done at Bristol University and a large number of companies are sponsoring the conference.
Professor Varinder Aggarwal, the conference organiser, said: "These companies shared with me the vision of bringing together a number of top chemists to provide high quality education and inspiration to a large number of students, academics and industrial chemists."
The conference will be the largest one-day conference ever held on synthetic chemistry. The anticipated audience of 750 people has been attracted by the very high calibre of the five international speakers.
Professor Aggarwal said: "The speakers agreed to come because they know about the very high quality of chemistry that is being conducted here at Bristol."
A recent government assessment of the research being done in British universities gave Bristol's chemistry department the highest grade possible.
The second Nobel Laureate to visit Bristol will be Professor Alan MacDiarmid from the University of Pennsylvania, on April 24. Professor MacDiarmid, also a synthetic chemist who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with two others in 2000, will give the Gordon Stone Lecture at the University on 'Synthetic Metals'.
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Email: public-relations@bristol.ac.uk
Copyright: 2001 The University of Bristol, UK
Updated: Wednesday, 20-Mar-2002 17:11:47 GMT