It depends on if you class mathematicians as scientists or not. I do, but just in case you don't: Michael Szwarc. Sounds crazy, I know, but allow me to explain.

Imagine a pot full of millions of small beads -- call these monomers. Now imagine connecting these beads together, however short or long or branched -- call these polymers. There will be hundreds of thousands of these.

Before Szwarc came along, this pretty much was the state of polymer synthesis: when you polymerised monomers, you had no control over how long or short your individual polymer strands would be after the reaction finished. This meant that you ended up with an average property for the entire system.

Szwarc showed that from a pot full of monomers, he could make polymer strands all of identical lengths. He called this living polymerisation. This is important because if the polymer strands are all identically the same size, they all have the same property, i.e., they all melt at the same temperature, they all fold or move at the same stress, they all have same number of everything. And even more importantly, it meant for the first time, you could make polymers with specific properties in mind.

Further, it was called living polymerisation for a reason: if you add a different type of bead (read: monomer with different properties) to the finished polymer, the polymer will pick up where it left off add those new beads to the end of the polymer chain in the same fashion; in other words, it's 'living'. This is exciting because it allows you to make polymers exactly the way you want with fenced molecular differences, thus properties, at either end.

I must state, though, that this technique was proposed by Ziegler in the 30s, but it was Szwarc who demonstrated it in the 50s using anionic polymerisation of styrene. Its greatest legacy is in leading to the development of free-radical living polymerisation techniques (read: much easier than Szwarc's original technique, though not as perfect).

Oh, and if you do class mathematicians as scientists, it has to be Georg Cantor. I even went to Halle to pay homage to the father of infinity.

And he uses a Vaio !

that was in 2009. it's possible has has replaced it with a mac by now.

:)

:)

thanks for that! i love learning about the scientists whom people admire, and why they admire them!

i actually do consider mathematicians to be scientists for several reasons (although i am not sure if brady haran, the videographer, does).

There is so much more to this, but I thought I'd waffled on long enough!

Just to give you an example of its application: consider drugs (medicine!). Most of the drugs we use need to be soluble in water because the body is ~70% water. But some of the most potent drugs we know are organic -- hydrophobic -- i.e., water repelling, which means we can't administer them.

Now, imagine a polymer where the first part is hydrophilic and the second part is hydrophobic (this is known as amphiphilic). Using living polymerisation, you can tailor-make an exact size polymer system that will hide the organic drug in the hydrophobic part but still be soluble in water by virtue of it hydrophilic part. It does this by encapsulating the organic drug within a micellar structure. In essence, you've found a way of administering an organic drug into an aqueous human body. What's more, the hydrophilic part of the polymer strands can be further tailored to attach onto specific cells where the drug is needed.

Oh, and because you have unprecedented control over the polymer architecture, these amphiphilic systems are nanometres long.

There are many other applications of living polymers. This was just one example that came to mind. Keep your eyes and ears open for another Nobel Prize for polymer science. The list is already illustrious: Staudinger (1953), Ziegler and Natta (1953), Flory (1974), de Gennes (1991), MacDiarmid, et. al (2000), Fenn, et. al (2002), Grubbs et. al (2005). This is amazing given that polymer science doesn't have its own category.

Really ? if he did, he would have used it as a square Frisbee .

Who is your favourite scientist?

Margaret Morse Nice. Got anything on her, Grrl?