Chemical Heritage

This aluminum necklace was on display at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in 2010. It was part of the CHF's Chemistry and Fashion: Making Modernity exhibit. A description of the necklace is still available via an unfortunately image-free post about Atomic Age women's jewelry. 

I like the necklace, a lot! Aluminum is very light; I do wonder whether the same necklace could be made of platinum or possibly iridium. If so, how it would it compare--in appearance (e.g. lustre) and weight-- to the aluminum version?

Aluminum necklace circa 1950

I wrote this post in October 2010. Times changed at the Chemical Heritage Museum since then, resulting in many broken links. This is an expanded version of that post, with replacement by valid alternative links for inline URLs. I apologize if I missed any. 

URL persistence hasn't been taken as seriously as the IETF and Internet Society had hoped; URL status, according to a Google Groups thread, as of 2013:

URLs are simply not persistent...from a recent study, about 15% of URLs from a large sample reach a lifetime of 1000 days. It's abysmal. And other studies back it up.

No Moore Chemical Heritage

Sadly, Chemical Heritage was absorbed by the Science History Institute in 2018, including the CHF's 5-story building. Most CHF collections can still be viewed at the museum's original location, at 315 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was born in Philadelphia, and attended graduate school there, so I feel an affinity. 

The former CHF building is near Centennial Hall, the Liberty Bell, and adjacent to a nice residential neighborhood called Society Hill. Penn's Landing is a few blocks to the east. That's where William Penn first arrived on the shores of America. 

Gordon E. Moore helped found the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and his generous donations provided much of the initial and sustaining funds.

Moore's Law

Periodic Tabloid: 
Musings on the Molecular

Interested in the legacy of Gordon Moore? A reproduction of his 1966 article, in which he introduced his famous law, is included in Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation. The book also recounts many observations by Moore, his peers, competitors, and others. It was written in order to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law. 

Although "Understanding Moore's Law" was published by the now defunct CHF Press, the Science History Institute kindly keeps an electronic version of the full text available as a PDF for online readers.

Heritage of Chemistry: Moore notable, noble chemists

I promise that this heading will be my final pun for today. It is a double pun, the best kind!

When I first wrote this, chemist and materials scientist Andre Geim had recently won the Nobel Prize.  In merely 10 years, he went from the dubious distinction of receiving an IgNoble prize for levitating frogs with magnets to winning the Nobel Prize for producing a one atom-thick material consisting of carbon atoms, arranged in a hexagonal lattice.  Geim named it graphene, and mapped its properties: incredibly thin but still incredibly strong, good heat and electrical conductivity, almost entirely transparent yet very dense.

Geim tells many fascinating anecdotes about his life prior to winning his Nobel Prize at the young age of 56: He was born in the Soviet Union and raised by his grandmother in Sochi, then Chechnya. Why? Because both his father and grandfather--despite being physicists--spent years away from home, in the Siberian gulag. This was due to Soviet suspicions because of their German ancestry. Also, shortly after WW1, Geim's paternal grandfather served as a junior minister in the brief Ukrainian nationalist government of Petiluria. 

In the course of Geim's studies and while an independent researcher (before immigrating to the West in 1990), he was a lieutenant in the Red Army, climbed several five kilometre high mountains, worked as bricklayer north of the Arctic Circle, studied intercontinental ballistic missiles while an undergraduate, and wasn't called ‘Russian’ until the age of 32. He experienced anti-German discrimination due to his last name, and his ancestry.

Double Ignoble-Nobel

Andre Geim is the sole individual to ever achieve the distinction of winning a IgNoble-Nobel Prize combo!

There was only one scientist who came close: Roy Glauber, a Harvard physics professor and researcher.  Glauber was the youngest theoretical physicist to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. His primary contribution to physics was in the field of quantum optics. Glauber taught physics to Harvard undergraduates and even summer school students in high school during the final years of his career

Glauber served for over a decade on the IgNoble Prize nomination and award committees. One of his duties was clearing the stage of paper airplanes as the audience threw them at award winners. Glauber was on the stage with Geim, as the latter levitated his frogs. 

Image credit:
Internat'l Assoc Physics

Five years later, Glauber won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics! He did not win an IgNoble Prize, unlike Geim, but as an annual participant at the award ceremony, he had a close affiliation.

Glauber appears quite serious in the photo on the left, dating back to his younger days as a post-doc at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. 

Image credit:
Mike Kurry, Encyclopædia Britannica

This is an official Nobel Foundation photo of Glauber after delivering his acceptance speech in Stockholm. A decade later, Glauber misplaced or lost the gold prize medal, although it wasn't due to age-related cognitive decline. Glauber didn't suffer from that, not even in the years immediately prior to his death in 2018 at the age of 93.

Here, Glauber does appear much more like the sort of person (humorous and a bit whimsical?) who would enjoy officiating at the IgNoble Prize ceremony!