Chemistry
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
© Harvard Univeristy
Arieh Warshel
Michael Levitt
Martin Karplus
This year Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for building complex computer systems which can explore the world of chemistry. Their models developed in the 1970’s changed chemistry by allowing chemists to dive deep into the world of atoms with a computer.
When Martin Karplu’s brother received a chemistry kit, Martin wanted one too. Instead he got a microscope. He was expected to be a doctor, but while at Harvard he changed his mind. In 1947 Karplus walked into the chemistry class of Professor Leonard K. Nash. Nash’s inspiration helped Karplus become interested in chemistry, and ever since then he has been on a path to discover the chemistry that makes our world happen. Karplus and his team at Harvard created huge software programs which simulated quantum and Newtonian physics ,and could explain reactions of certain complex molecules.
Meanwhile in Israel, Michael Levitt created similar programs with Arieh Warshel which could measure the chemical processes of large biological molecules. Levitt was a brilliant programmer and was able to consolidate his code so it would not take up so much space so he could make a program that would take rooms full of servers and make it smaller. Soon Levitt, Warshel, and Karplus were mapping all types of molecules using computers and coming up with results that could match work done in labs, and even exceed it. Figuring out the chemical properties of enzymes using computers was one challenge that was not easy. These big biological molecules produce biochemical reactions essential to the function of the cell. In the Seventies when Warshel, and Levitt tackled the problem, hardly anything was known about the properties of enzymes. Levitt and Warshel tackled the problem by programming the computer to look at the molecules part’s in isolation and then try and figure out how they worked with the other components of the enzymes.
The days of tests tubes are not over, but because of the work of Karplus, Levitt, and Warshel test tubes are only half of the picture in chemistry. New discoveries and predictions are being made with these computer programs and although chemists were a little slow to pick up on the idea, the programs have now become an everyday part of a chemist’s arsenal.