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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 1h

That did come with a conceptual pitch for a general approach to chemistry, but was itself an improvement to existing technology.

Anyway - I think your point stands, and is interesting!

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 1h

Sure, I've not special insight into how the prizes are awarded. But the breakthrough in 'click chemistry' itself was the finding that Cu can catalyse a known reaction, making it more generally applicable. 1/2

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Chem by Cell Press @cp-chem.bsky.social · 2h

A very warm congratulations from the Chem team to this year's Nobel Laureates in Chemistry!

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 2h

You could argue click chemistry was an improvement. The key catalytic insight is an improvement on the prior thermal version. Not sure if this is the kind of thing you had in mind?

(not to discount the portion of the prize for the development of bioorthogonal chemistry, ofc)

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Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 4h

UGH lobbyists. The transition to plant-based foods is just as important as that to renewable energy.

Mark Lynas @marklynas.bsky.social · 4h

WOW! The European Parliament just voted to BAN the words 'burger' and 'sausage' when used in sustainable plant-based alternatives. HUGE win for the meat and dairy lobby in the EU, and lots more confusion for consumers if this goes through. Insane!
www.euroveg.eu/european-par...

European Parliament votes to ban use of ‘veggie burger’ and ‘plant-based sausage’ - European Vegetarian Union

Brussels, 8 October 2025 European Parliament votes to ban use of ‘veggie burger’ and ‘plant-based sausage’: coalition calls decision misguided and counterproductive This Wednesday the Members of the E...

www.euroveg.eu

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Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 6h

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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John Trant @trantteam.bsky.social · 4h

Asking Nick Clegg for permission to take all his money out of his bank account would kill my "Take all Nick Clegg's money out of his bank account" business. Look, I'm willing to diversify to "Take all billionaires money and transfer it as block grants to developing nations."

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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Dr Connor Wells @connorwells95.bsky.social · 4h

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 4h

Oh, I've been out of the lab too long to know, I just remember a lot of Discourse about weekend working. (of course, what is an acceptable opinion on twitter and what happens in actual labs don't always align.)

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 4h

They probably are. But so is the weekly cycle of "this grad student tweeted from the lab on a Saturday, may we burn her?" discourse.

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 4h

For all people say #chemsky hasn't quite matched the heyday of chemtwitter, for me it hits the spot - I can follow people I actually want to follow, grandstanding from 10k+ accounts is largely invisible, and you can actually see and reply to posts in real time rather than iff they get 100 likes.

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 5h

He's just reading the post above, obviously

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jgocd.bsky.social @jgocd.bsky.social · 7h

Chem Nobel reaction live from Kyoto Uni! Not every day your nextdoor neighbour wins!

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 5h

I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun in the lab than when I was making MOFs myself (and trying to use them for small-molecule X-ray structure determination). So let me celebrate by posting a few of the MOF crystals I prepared:

Bright green transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with copper and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed blocky roughly rectangular pieces with some very large emerald-like chunks.

Pink/red transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with cobalt and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed as a mixture of long rectangular types and aggregated chunks.

Purple transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with cobalt and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed long slightly blocky needles.

Clear transparent metal-organic framework crystals prepared with zirconium and a “multipronged” carboxylic acid ligand. The crystals formed chunky hexagons.

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Marcel Swart 🟥 @marcelswart.bsky.social · 6h

Nice!
@wesleybrowne.bsky.social used Raman spectroscopy to check if old samples are toxic

ukrant.nl/magazine/tox...

Toxic formalin or something else? Shining a light on the University Museum’s mystery jars

Chemist Wesley Browne came up with a way to figure out which of the University Museum's wet specimens have been preserved in toxic liquid.

ukrant.nl

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 6h

It's biology, ofc.

Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 7h

<Attenborough voice> here we see, in the wild, a remarkable phenomenon: the Nat Chem desk reject. We can see that the editor - a rare but magnificent Bearded Cantrill - remains joyous, despite the predator circling behind him...

Stu Cantrill @stuartcantrill.com · 7h

Time to break out this pic of me being strangled by a future #Nobel Laureate in 2017… #Chemsky #chemnobel…

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Chris Gorski @scigorski.bsky.social · 7h

From a 2019 interview with Kitagawa -- "it was common sense that organic materials could not make a stable porous structure. People thought we were doing “useless” research because they did not realize the potential of the seemingly trivial space inside the pores." pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Interview with Professor Susumu Kitagawa

CONTENT TYPES

pubs.acs.org

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Robbie Andrew @robbieandrew.bsky.social · Jul 9

Maybe one day soon we'll all be talking about MOFs and COFs. Interesting article.

World’s most porous sponges: intricate carbon-trapping powders hit the market

Metal-organic frameworks were the next big thing in chemistry when they were invented more than three decades ago. Now, these intriguing materials are becoming commercial tools for capturing carbon di...

www.nature.com

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 7h

I expected it'd get it sooner or later... but figured it'd be later. To my (non-expert) knowledge, commercialisation has been fairly limited, and given how long LIBs took I just figured it'd be a similar case here. But it's well deserved in any case, and makes future predictions trickier!

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 7h

Well don't I look like a bloody idiot

Congrats to MOFs!

Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 1d

This could be an embarrassing tweet in two days' time, but I wonder if MOFs will get it any time soon. LIBs took decades and have had a much bigger impact.

Not a comment on what's deserved, and the reasoning behind these things is totally opaque to me. But I'm not betting on MOFs any time soon.

Stu Cantrill @stuartcantrill.com · 2d

#NobelPrize week starts tomorrow & the #chemnobel is Wednesday… used to be so much Nobel chat on Tw*tter, but that is not replicated here, alas. Anyway, for the record, I think MOFs will win at some point (maybe this year maybe not). Balasubramanian & Klenerman a good bet for next-gen sequencing too

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Vittorio Saggiomo @vsaggiomo.bsky.social · 7h

The group is ready :) #nobel #chemsky

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Stu Cantrill @stuartcantrill.com · 10h

It’s #chemnobel day. For me, and for quite a few other people who spent time in the Stoddart group, it will hit somewhat differently this year.

Seems the right time to share a couple of passages from the eulogy I gave at Fraser’s funeral earlier this year.

A screenshot of text that reads:

Fraser lived his life at a hundred miles an hour. But it wasn't always the best thing for him or for those closest to him. In an interview following the award of the Nobel Prize in 2016 he recalled his time growing up on a farm and said that that had instilled in him the work ethic of a honeybee. Nobody would doubt that he had that. He also talked about having the strength of a horse and the hide of an elephant; what he didn't mention is that he could also be as stubborn as a mule. He did things his way and was rarely persuaded to do otherwise.

This bloody-mindedness undoubtedly contributed to his incredibly successful career. While those who didn't really know him will measure his contributions through the prizes he won, his real professional legacy is not those prizes, it is the people who passed through his lab and shared in his scientific journey. Yes, he changed science, but he changed lives too - including mine and many of those here today. I learned a lot from Fraser: some chemistry, how to make slides for presentations, how to always include a noun after the word 'this', and a few random Scottish words that I'm still not convinced he didn't just make up.

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Tim Worthington @outonbluesix.bsky.social · 9h

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

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Andrew Bissette @andrewbissette.bsky.social · 8h

It's a popular one, along with "novel". Occasionally you find a chain of citations going back 20 years about some compound, in which every paper describes it as "novel" in the title.

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