Chemistry is the science of matter: Nobel laureate

Bhubaneswar: Chemistry is the science of matter and of its transformations, and life is its highest expression, Nobel laureate Prof Jean-Marie Lehn said on Sunday.

Chemistry plays a primordial role in our understanding of material phenomena, in our capability to act upon them, to modify them, to control them and to invent new expressions of them, Lehn said, who had got Nobel prize for chemistry in 1987.

In the beginning was the Big Bang, and physics reigned, he said. Then chemistry came along at milder temperatures, particles formed atoms; these united to give more and more complex molecules, which in turn associated into organised aggregates and membranes, defining primitive cells out of which life emerged, he said while delivering the 10th KIIT Foundation Lecture here.

He said chemistry is also a science of transfers, a communication centre and a relay between the simple and the complex, between the laws of physics and the rules of life, between the basic and the applied.

If it is thus defined in its inter disciplinary relationships, it is also defined in itself, by its object and its method, Lehn said.

In its method, chemistry is a science of interactions, of transformations and of models, he said, adding that, in its object, the molecule and the material, chemistry expresses its creativity.

Chemical synthesis has the power to produce new molecules and new materials with new properties, he said. New indeed, because they did not exist before being created by the re-composition of atomic arrangements into novel and infinitely varied combinations and structures, the Nobel laureate said.