thesis
The living lab On a recent break I had the distinct fortune to take with me into the hills of northern Alabama an exquisite little book; The Living Mountain, by Nan Shepherd (Canongate Books, 2011). Shepherd’s masterpiece, written during the Second World War but not published until 1977, recounts her experiences and relationship with the Cairngorm mountains (pictured) in north central Scotland. This is a part of the world that, when I was younger, I had the pleasure of exploring in delicious depth. Shepherd describes herself as a ‘peerer into corners’, and her writing has a poetic and philosophical style that is refreshingly different from the barrage of machismo — I reached the summit in record time despite extensive endogenous and exogenous adversity — tales that pervade modern film and literature in this genre. Her prose is a breath of fresh, contemplative air. Climbing mountains is not about serial ultra-marathons. As Shepherd says, “To pit oneself against the mountains is necessary for every climber, to pit oneself merely against other players, and make a race of it, is to reduce to the level of a game what is essentially an experience.” I couldn’t agree more.
There is plenty of beauty to be created and found in the research laboratory, and it all begins in the office. It is unfortunate that as research chemists, part of the job does not entail strolling through scenery and peering into corners. No serene walk, contemplating the breaking on the shoreline of transient waves gently laced with the depths of eternity. No witnessing the edge of a corrie (cirque) metamorphosing in one’s mind from aweinspiring crenelated battlement to the razor-sharp teeth in the jowls of a ravenous beast… simply at a sudden change in the weather. No getting ‘drunk’ on the heady, brandy-like perfume from a copse of birch after light summer rain. None of that for us! Or is there? There is plenty of beauty to be created and found in the research laboratory, and it all begins in the office. Although the job
GRAHAM UNEY/ALAMY
Bruce Gibb finds wonder in the landscape of chemistry research.
description may not involve wandering through beautiful vistas, we do get to create them. We begin with a simple question, and seek to answer it or expand on it with solid data. Ultimately we don’t just want to apprehend the subject matter, but comprehend it. On one level this is a futile gesture; one cannot completely get one’s mind around the compass and extent of the complicatedness or even complexity (in the emergent phenomena sense) of most chemistry. But we have to try! And so as we seek comprehension and gather data to build up a picture, if we are lucky a (research) vista begins to emerge. Is this niche we make for ourselves likely to save the world? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Time will tell. If we nurture our ideas carefully, the view will be truly beautiful, perhaps not to the whole world (you can’t keep everyone happy all the time), but certainly to you. If not, why did you create it? The landscape that you have created will have endless nooks and crannies to peer into, vast plains whose boundaries are known but whose inner details are yet to be mapped, perhaps there are summits, cols, valleys, glens and corries. Maybe your preferred metaphors are water based — majestic rivers, glacial lakes, even stagnant bogs (we can all remember being stuck in one of those in
NATURE CHEMISTRY | VOL 6 | MAY 2014 | www.nature.com/naturechemistry
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
the lab). Regardless, some of these vistas are worth talking about, and so we produce a publication; a cairn or similar marker that tells the world: we were here and look what we have found! And as the cairns grow in number, so the world gets a better understanding of our vista of the mind. Others may even come to visit, which will often elicit mixed emotions of joy and fear! Joy because it is satisfying to have one’s work acknowledged and appreciated by peers, but fear that if what you have found is too beautiful, everyone will want to come. Those who stand to profit from a new highway or funicular railway will vehemently argue otherwise, but the essence and spirit of a remote location can be disfigured or even destroyed by the uncontrolled angiogenesis of new transportation routes to a beauty spot. And to a certain extent the same is true in chemistry. The science will always be there, unspoiled, or perhaps even improved by the new visitors; and if we have not put it to good use in ‘the real world’ ourselves, others may come along and do so. But that science will never, ever be the same again; it will have lost an ineffable quality. And those visitors, and those who have yet to come, will never know the true beauty of the area. And so, 371
thesis happy that we have made our mark, we move on to seek out new lands to discover. A flash of inspiration! Or perhaps a touch of fresh insight from a seminar or a new group member may lead us to a path not travelled for some time, or perhaps to an entirely new path altogether. And with some hard work, that path may ultimately take us to a new place with not only new and interesting recesses, but also a different perspective on the ever-developing panorama. Have you stood and looked at the world from that yonder col? Did you find what you expected to find? With nurtured aforethought and good fortune, we may discover great secrets; things of beauty that were lying hidden in full view; oh, to be the first to make the discovery! It’s so obvious now that we are here, yet was so difficult to see from afar. Time for a new campsite and cairn, so that we, or others, may exploit what we have found and put it to use.
372
We may happen upon a new place yet leave it untouched for another day; but take care that someone else is not on a path that takes them to this new locale of chemical space! One day we may return to this spot not visited in a long while.
We begin with a simple question, and seek to answer it or expand on it with solid data. Perhaps a recently acquired perspective on the panorama has shed new light on this area. Now we know what needs to be done. Perhaps the terrain was too tricky at the last passing, but with new equipment the river can be forded or the precipice defeated. Another cairn perhaps? And so we go on, creating new and beautiful landscapes for chemical society to
enjoy for no other reason than because they are there, or for society to use as the great experiment in humanity moves forward. Blessed are those with long careers who can create such landscapes; whose senses are still keen enough to allow them to remember every feature of the complex panorama they have built over the years, still keen enough to know where in the landscape each past and present group member has been, and wise enough to know where a group neophyte should start their journey into the unknown. What compensation for tired legs! To paraphrase Shepherd’s descriptions of the Cairngorms; chemical research holds astonishment for me. There is no getting used to it. ❐ Bruce C. Gibb is in the Department of Chemistry at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, USA. e-mail: [email protected]
NATURE CHEMISTRY | VOL 6 | MAY 2014 | www.nature.com/naturechemistry
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
The living lab On a recent break I had the distinct fortune to take with me into the hills of northern Alabama an exquisite little book; The Living Mountain, by Nan Shepherd (Canongate Books, 2011). Shepherd’s masterpiece, written during the Second World War but not published until 1977, recounts her experiences and relationship with the Cairngorm mountains (pictured) in north central Scotland. This is a part of the world that, when I was younger, I had the pleasure of exploring in delicious depth. Shepherd describes herself as a ‘peerer into corners’, and her writing has a poetic and philosophical style that is refreshingly different from the barrage of machismo — I reached the summit in record time despite extensive endogenous and exogenous adversity — tales that pervade modern film and literature in this genre. Her prose is a breath of fresh, contemplative air. Climbing mountains is not about serial ultra-marathons. As Shepherd says, “To pit oneself against the mountains is necessary for every climber, to pit oneself merely against other players, and make a race of it, is to reduce to the level of a game what is essentially an experience.” I couldn’t agree more.
There is plenty of beauty to be created and found in the research laboratory, and it all begins in the office. It is unfortunate that as research chemists, part of the job does not entail strolling through scenery and peering into corners. No serene walk, contemplating the breaking on the shoreline of transient waves gently laced with the depths of eternity. No witnessing the edge of a corrie (cirque) metamorphosing in one’s mind from aweinspiring crenelated battlement to the razor-sharp teeth in the jowls of a ravenous beast… simply at a sudden change in the weather. No getting ‘drunk’ on the heady, brandy-like perfume from a copse of birch after light summer rain. None of that for us! Or is there? There is plenty of beauty to be created and found in the research laboratory, and it all begins in the office. Although the job
GRAHAM UNEY/ALAMY
Bruce Gibb finds wonder in the landscape of chemistry research.
description may not involve wandering through beautiful vistas, we do get to create them. We begin with a simple question, and seek to answer it or expand on it with solid data. Ultimately we don’t just want to apprehend the subject matter, but comprehend it. On one level this is a futile gesture; one cannot completely get one’s mind around the compass and extent of the complicatedness or even complexity (in the emergent phenomena sense) of most chemistry. But we have to try! And so as we seek comprehension and gather data to build up a picture, if we are lucky a (research) vista begins to emerge. Is this niche we make for ourselves likely to save the world? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Time will tell. If we nurture our ideas carefully, the view will be truly beautiful, perhaps not to the whole world (you can’t keep everyone happy all the time), but certainly to you. If not, why did you create it? The landscape that you have created will have endless nooks and crannies to peer into, vast plains whose boundaries are known but whose inner details are yet to be mapped, perhaps there are summits, cols, valleys, glens and corries. Maybe your preferred metaphors are water based — majestic rivers, glacial lakes, even stagnant bogs (we can all remember being stuck in one of those in
NATURE CHEMISTRY | VOL 6 | MAY 2014 | www.nature.com/naturechemistry
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
the lab). Regardless, some of these vistas are worth talking about, and so we produce a publication; a cairn or similar marker that tells the world: we were here and look what we have found! And as the cairns grow in number, so the world gets a better understanding of our vista of the mind. Others may even come to visit, which will often elicit mixed emotions of joy and fear! Joy because it is satisfying to have one’s work acknowledged and appreciated by peers, but fear that if what you have found is too beautiful, everyone will want to come. Those who stand to profit from a new highway or funicular railway will vehemently argue otherwise, but the essence and spirit of a remote location can be disfigured or even destroyed by the uncontrolled angiogenesis of new transportation routes to a beauty spot. And to a certain extent the same is true in chemistry. The science will always be there, unspoiled, or perhaps even improved by the new visitors; and if we have not put it to good use in ‘the real world’ ourselves, others may come along and do so. But that science will never, ever be the same again; it will have lost an ineffable quality. And those visitors, and those who have yet to come, will never know the true beauty of the area. And so, 371
thesis happy that we have made our mark, we move on to seek out new lands to discover. A flash of inspiration! Or perhaps a touch of fresh insight from a seminar or a new group member may lead us to a path not travelled for some time, or perhaps to an entirely new path altogether. And with some hard work, that path may ultimately take us to a new place with not only new and interesting recesses, but also a different perspective on the ever-developing panorama. Have you stood and looked at the world from that yonder col? Did you find what you expected to find? With nurtured aforethought and good fortune, we may discover great secrets; things of beauty that were lying hidden in full view; oh, to be the first to make the discovery! It’s so obvious now that we are here, yet was so difficult to see from afar. Time for a new campsite and cairn, so that we, or others, may exploit what we have found and put it to use.
372
We may happen upon a new place yet leave it untouched for another day; but take care that someone else is not on a path that takes them to this new locale of chemical space! One day we may return to this spot not visited in a long while.
We begin with a simple question, and seek to answer it or expand on it with solid data. Perhaps a recently acquired perspective on the panorama has shed new light on this area. Now we know what needs to be done. Perhaps the terrain was too tricky at the last passing, but with new equipment the river can be forded or the precipice defeated. Another cairn perhaps? And so we go on, creating new and beautiful landscapes for chemical society to
enjoy for no other reason than because they are there, or for society to use as the great experiment in humanity moves forward. Blessed are those with long careers who can create such landscapes; whose senses are still keen enough to allow them to remember every feature of the complex panorama they have built over the years, still keen enough to know where in the landscape each past and present group member has been, and wise enough to know where a group neophyte should start their journey into the unknown. What compensation for tired legs! To paraphrase Shepherd’s descriptions of the Cairngorms; chemical research holds astonishment for me. There is no getting used to it. ❐ Bruce C. Gibb is in the Department of Chemistry at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, USA. e-mail: [email protected]
NATURE CHEMISTRY | VOL 6 | MAY 2014 | www.nature.com/naturechemistry
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
![[Living Lab MACVIA. Disability].](/assets/img/hold.png)
