UC Berkeley Science News

The American Chemical Society awarded UC Berkeley chemist John Hartwig its Herbert C. Brown Award For Creative Research In Synthetic Methods “for the creative discovery and insightful development of fundamentally new, broadly utilized" chemical reactions, such as syntheses using transition metals as catalysts.

UC Berkeley and University of Hawaii scientists have shown that complex molecules can form on icy rocks in space, suggesting that comets may have seeded early Earth with the building blocks of life. The team zapped icy snowballs of carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons, producing complex molecules, such as dipeptides, that are capable of catalyzing the formation of more complex structures.

Donald Glaser, a Nobel-prize winning physicist who reinvented himself as a biotech pioneer and later dove into the field of neurobiology, died in his sleep Thursday morning, Feb. 28, at his home in Berkeley. Glaser, a professor emeritus of physics and of molecular and cell biology, was 86.

UC Berkeley sleep researcher Matthew Walker's City Arts & Lectures talk on "The Brilliance of Sleep" airs on KQED radio tonight (Tuesday, March 5) at 8 p.m. and on Wednesday and Sunday.