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Snap Observations: Surface Chemistry Nobel Around the Web
Gerhard Ertl won this year’s Nobel prize for chemistry for work that explained the chemical mechanisms behind processes of importance in everyday life: rust, catalytic converters, and the production of industrial fertilizer. Here’s a roundup of news coverage that underscores, again, the value of fundamental scientific research for society at large.
The Nobel committee cited Ertl “for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces.”
AFP, AP, and Reuters hit on the implications of his work for understanding rust, fuel cells, catalytic converters, damage to the ozone layer, and the Haber-Bosch process for generating fertilizer.
The Wired Science Blog proclaims that “The surfaces of solids are one of the most important frontiers of modern science.”
Terra Sigilliata drives home the importance of understanding corrosion, which is “the term for these normally unwanted chemical reactions and is as important in industry as it is in everyday life.”
It seems hard to over-emphasize the importance of the Haber-Bosch process on modern agriculture. In The Pipeline offers technical details and Nature News quotes Andrea Sella, who declared it “the industrial process which can safely be said to have had the widest impact on mankind.” Good thing we know how it works.
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