Listen "114: We Can Work It Out"
Episode Synopsis
Here we talk of the first real molecular machines of the 1990s, and the chemistry advances required to invent them. We define what such a machine is, and reach back into organic chemistry of the 1940s and 1950s for "conformational analysis." We recall the Bell Labs chemists Harry Frisch and Edel Wasserman, and their foundation of chemical topology. Gottfried Schill, Arthur Lüttringhaus, plus Ian and Shuyen Harrison, synthesized interesting mechanical compounds. Through the 1970s and 1980s, chemists continued to advance molecular components of machines, and by the 1990s, the first true molecular machines (aside from existing biomolecules) were created.Support the show Support my podcast at https://www.patreon.com/thehistoryofchemistry Tell me how your life relates to chemistry! E-mail me at [email protected] Get my book, O Mg! How Chemistry Came to Be, from World Scientific Publishing, https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12670#t=aboutBook
More episodes of the podcast The History of Chemistry
184: Alles ist Chemie (Conclusion)
08/09/2025
183: New World Coming
31/08/2025
182: It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It
22/08/2025
181: A Work in Progress
17/08/2025
180: Farm to Market
08/08/2025
179: This Episode is Meta
01/08/2025
178: Honors and Awards
25/07/2025
177: Greek Salad
16/07/2025
176: Inside Information
08/07/2025
175: It's All Fun and Games Until...
25/06/2025
ZARZA We are Zarza, the prestigious firm behind major projects in information technology.