Nobel Prize Colloquium

Univ.-Prof. Werner Sitte, who opened the Webex event supervised by Ms. Hochedlinger and Ms. Bianca Brandstätter on behalf of Rector Wilfried Eichlseder, was again able to welcome well over 100 participants at the screens.

The afternoon started with the lecture on the physics topic, which was introduced by Ao.Univ. Prof. Christian Teichert, Institute of Physics. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was dedicated to pioneering contributions to the understanding of complex systems in the framework of statistical physics. One half of the prize was awarded to the Italian theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi for his discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales. A quarter each went to Japanese-born U.S. climate scientist Syukuro Manabe and German physicist Klaus Hasselmann for work in the 1960s and 1970s on physical modeling of the Earth's climate, quantifying its fluctuations, and reliably predicting global warming. Due to the topicality and explosiveness of climate change, this part of the award was chosen as the lecture topic, for which Prof. Dr. Douglas Maraun of the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at the University of Graz, one of the lead authors on the recently published sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was recruited as a competent speaker. Unfortunately, his talk entitled "The Earth's Energy Balance, Climate Change and the Human Contribution" had to be cut short after about 30 minutes due to massive transmission problems. The speaker kindly provided the recording of a presentation given the day before at the University of Graz, so that all those interested can review the entire contribution.

After a short break, Univ.-Prof. Werner Sitte of the Department of Physical Chemistry transitioned to this year's 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in equal parts to Benjamin List (Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim/Ruhr, D) and David MacMillan (Princeton University, USA) for developments in the field of asymmetric organocatalysis. Certain molecules occur in two variants that behave like image and mirror image ("chirality"). For the production of pharmaceuticals, it is important that only one variant of these molecules is present, as only this one performs the desired biological function in our bodies, while the other could trigger side effects. With the metal-free catalysts developed by the laureates, the desired "chiral" variant can be produced with high selectivity in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals. The presentation of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was made in an impressive and generally understandable manner by Univ.-Prof. Rolf Breinbauer from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Graz University of Technology. Mr. Breinbauer not only works on the subject of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but also knows this year's laureates personally. The lecture was followed by an interesting discussion.