When you are trying to understand chemical reactions, imagine that you are working with the atoms. Imagine the building blocks are right in front of you on the table. Sometimes we use our chemistry toys to help us visualize the movement of the atoms. We plug and unplug the little connectors that represent chemical bonds. There are a few key points you should know about chemical reactions:

1. A chemical change must occur. You start with one molecule and turn it into another. Chemical bonds are made or broken in order to create a new molecule. One example of a chemical reaction is the rusting of a steel garbage can. That rusting happens because the iron (Fe) in the metal combines with oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere. Chemical bonds are created and destroyed to finally make iron oxide (Fe2O3).

When a refrigerator or air conditioner cools the air, there is no reaction in the air molecules. The change in temperature is a physical change. When you melt an ice cube, it is a physical change. When you put bleach in the washing machine to clean your clothes, a chemical change breaks up the molecules in your stains.

2. A reaction could include atoms, ions, compounds, or molecules of a single element. You need to remember that a chemical reaction can happen with anything, just as long as a chemical change occurs. If you put pure hydrogen gas (H2) and pure oxygen gas in a room, they might be involved in a reaction to form water (H2O). However, it will be in very very small amounts. If you were to add a spark, those gases would be involved in a violent chemical reaction that would result in a huge explosion (exothermic). Another chemical reaction might include silver ions (Ag+). If you mix a solution with silver ions with a solution that has chloride (Cl-) ions, silver chloride (AgCl) precipitate will form and drop out of solution.

3. Single reactions often happen as part of a larger series of reactions. When a plant makes sugars, there might be as many as a dozen chemical reactions to get through the Calvin cycle and eventually create (synthesize) glucose (C6H12O6) molecules. The rusting example we used earlier only showed you the original reactants and final products of the chemical reaction. There were several intermediate reactions where chemical bonds were created and destroyed. The silver chloride example only focused on the ions. In reality, the two solutions were created when two salts dissociated (split into ions) in water.

Mars: Why is Curiosity Looking for Organics? (NASA/JPL Video)

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CRAIN'S DETROIT BUSINESS: You started the company in the back of your house, right, around 1970? How did that come about?

GEORGE HILL: Well, this is one of those believe-it-or-not kind of situations. I was working at Chrysler Corp. at the time. The director of government affairs ... got ill and he was supposed to be representing Chrysler at a (Small Business Administration) conference and ... he called me up and said, 'George, you've been around for a while ... I want you to stand in for me.' This is a true story. So, I went to the conference.

I wandered about and wandered into this one particular event and you had to sign in, not knowing that my signage was going to end up being a data point to the people who were in that group who were interested in contracts. A few weeks later I started getting these government bids in the mail. I went to this friend of mine who was kind of in that business, knew something about it. He said, 'Look, why don't we see if we can't make some money on the side.' We did it, and we got the bid. We got several more and he said, 'See how easy it is to make money in this chemical business?' That became kind of a side job ... and bingo. Here we are.

So in 1968 you were on a CBS affiliate in Detroit hosting the show "Job Opportunity Line," the first Black person on regularly scheduled TV in the area. Can you talk about how that came about?

Well, what happened is that after the ('67 uprising) of course there was a great deal of interest, as there is now, in what's going on in the Black community ... and everyone was trying to figure out what could be done to improve conditions in the community and to get a better peek into the world of African Americans. A friend of mine ... had been talking to CBS without my knowledge. He'd kind of thrown my hat into the ring. He called me and said, 'George, I've done this and I wonder if you'd take the time to talk to these folks.' So I went out and talked to them and much to my surprise, they wanted me to do it. I was the interviewer, we talked about jobs, education, things in the community. I was interviewing people who had companies, I was interviewing university professors about training ... It was really odd. It came out on Sunday mornings this is kind of funny. When I first started the business, you know, there was a period in which you're gearing up to do your manufacturing and on one point in time I would be in people's living rooms and bedrooms (doing interviews) and then on Monday I'd be out calling on small businesses and we'd be going in to (do cleaning work). They'd look at me and say, 'Didn't I see you on TV yesterday morning? ... Come on, come on to my office, we'll talk.' ... That might be the secret sauce to the beginnings of the company's small successes.

How did the company develop over time, then?

We started off doing simple things. (Chemicals to) clean the floor, clean the toilets, that kind of stuff. We had a small plant up on Woodrow Wilson. We were selling things primarily in gallons and drums, that kind of stuff. As we grew and had our own chemists, we recognized the formulations that were being used to clean X would be the same basic formulations to clean Y. Then, in the manufacturing plants, once a part is machined, it has to be cleaned before it can be welded or assembled or anything else, and they'd been cleaning all these things with ... very high caustic solutions and high heat, and the energy costs were just enormous. Well, as we got more chemists and had more sophistication ... we started innovating in terms of the things we could do in our plants and laboratories here that would mimic and replicate what was going on in our customers' plants. We developed a variety of very innovative products that really saved a lot of money and did a great deal of cleaning without the dangers of the caustic being heated up.

Can you give us an idea of the size of the company?

In terms of revenue we're in the $75 million-$100 million range. We will be in the neighborhood of $80 million probably in 2021. We have about 90 employees.

You guys put emphasis on hiring Detroit residents, right?

We always do. There was a lot more talent and confidence, particularly in the Black community, than people suspected. I mean this is an extraordinary city. We felt there was a lot here to tap into (as a Black middle class and education and homeownership grew with the automotive industry) ... so we really felt as though, given my personal philosophy that people really drive your success, people who are talented, committed, skilled, passionate ... so Detroit itself was just the perfect spot. We grew on a national basis and even built a plant in Germany and in South Korea at one time ... We've been a much bigger company, by the way, we've sold off divisions. In the downturn of the '80s we sold off a $25 million-$30 million division. But the basis for all that (expansion) was the people who were here and the educational base that was here and industries that were here.

Anything new going on?

We are licensed to manufacture, and the only licensee in the country, to manufacture a product called Envirocleanse, which is a water-based disinfectant that kills the virus that leads to COVID-19. (We got the license) within the last six-seven months.

Right now we're looking at this pandemic-induced downturn. What do you think needs to be done in Detroit to help the city and Detroiters during this time?

I've got a philosophy that the answer to the regeneration of urban areas and the regeneration of the economy would be a marriage between corporate America and small business, particularly small business that's diverse. Black, Hispanic, et cetera. As we look at the relationship we've got with some of our partners for instance, Henkel (Adhesive Technologies). Henkel is engaged with us on the community level ... Henkel has joined with us (on an educational and mentorship program called Math Corps) and (companies like Henkel) want to do something that makes a difference. So my answer to what has to be done is bringing resources ... into our community and that those resources make an investment in people, who are the businesses, in order to make sure we have a future that is always in jeopardy if we are not always developing the skills to make us first ... I'm going to sound very critical when I say this. Our level of science competency and engineering competency, we are no longer leaders of the world in those areas. We should be. We need to come together in a way that we start recognizing this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Hear the entire interview on crainsdetroit.com/theConversation

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Diversified Chemical's George Hill on finding the right chemistry - Crain's Detroit Business

In the past few years, researchers have turned increasingly to data science techniques to aid problem-solving in organic synthesis.

Researchers in the lab ofAbigail Doyle, Princeton's A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Chemistry,have developed open-source software that provides them with a state-of-the-art optimization algorithm to use in everyday work, folding whats been learned in the machine learning field into synthetic chemistry.

Princeton chemists Benjamin Shields and Abigail Doyle worked with computer scientist Ryan Adams (not pictured) to create machine learning software that can optimize reactions using artificial intelligence to speed through thousands of reactions that chemists used to have to labor through one by one.

Photo by

C. Todd Reichart, Department of Chemistry

The software adapts key principles of Bayesian Optimization (BO) to allow faster and more efficient syntheses of chemicals.

Based on the Bayes Theorem, a mathematical formula for determining conditional probability, BO is a widely used strategy in the sciences. Broadly defined, it allows people and computersuse prior knowledge to inform and optimize future decisions.

The chemists in Doyle's lab, in collaboration withRyanAdams, a professor of computer science,and colleagues at Bristol-Myers Squibb, comparedhuman decision-making capabilities with the software package. They found that the optimization tool yields both greater efficiency over human participants and less bias on a test reaction. Their work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Reaction optimization is ubiquitous in chemical synthesis, both in academia and across the chemical industry, said Doyle.Since chemical space is so large, it is impossible for chemists to evaluate the entirety of a reaction space experimentally. We wanted to develop and assess BO as a tool for synthetic chemistry given its success for related optimization problems in the sciences.

Benjamin Shields, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Doyle lab and the papers lead author, created the Python package.

I come from a synthetic chemistry background, so I definitely appreciate that synthetic chemists are pretty good at tackling these problems on their own, said Shields. Where I think the real strength of Bayesian Optimization comes in is that it allows us to model these high-dimensional problems and capture trends that we may not see in the data ourselves, so it can process the data a lot better.

And two, within a space, it will not be held back by the biases of a human chemist, he added.

The software started as an out-of-field project to fulfill Shields doctoral requirements. Doyle and Shield then formed a team under the Center for Computer Assisted Synthesis (C-CAS), a National Science Foundation initiative launched at five universities to transform how the synthesis of complex organic molecules is planned and executed. Doyle has been a principal investigator with C-CAS since 2019.

Reaction optimization can be an expensive and time-consuming process, said Adams, who is also the director of the Program in Statistics and Machine Learning. This approach not only accelerates it using state-of-the-art techniques, but also finds better solutions than humans would typically identify. I think this is just the beginning of whats possible with Bayesian Optimization in this space.

Users start by defining a search space plausible experiments to consider such as a list of catalysts, reagents, ligands, solvents, temperatures, and concentrations. Once that space is prepared and the user defines how many experiments to run, the software chooses initial experimental conditions to be evaluated. Thenit suggests new experiments to run, iterating through a smaller and smaller cast of choices until the reaction is optimized.

In designing the software, I tried to include ways for people to kind of inject what they know about a reaction, said Shields. No matter how you use this or machine learning in general, theres always going to be a case where human expertise is valuable.

The software and examples for its use can be accessed at this repository. GitHub links are available for the following: software that represents the chemicals under evaluation in a machine-readable format via density-functional theory; software for reaction optimization; and the game that collects chemists decision-making on optimization of the test reaction.

"Bayesian reaction optimization as a tool for chemical synthesis," byBenjamin J. Shields, Jason Stevens, Jun Li, Marvin Parasram, Farhan Damani, Jesus I. Martinez Alvarado, Jacob M. Janey, Ryan P. Adams andAbigail G. Doyle, appears in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature (DOI:10.1038/s41586-021-03213-y). This research was supported by funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb, the Princeton Catalysis Initiative, the National Science Foundation under the CCI Center for Computer Assisted Synthesis (CHE-1925607), and the DataX Program at Princeton University through support from the Schmidt Futures Foundation.

Editor's note: You can read the unabridged version of this story on the Department of Chemistry homepage.

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Chemistry and computer science join forces to apply artificial intelligence to chemical reactions - Princeton University

February 1, 2021• Physics 14, 13

Colliding a large organic molecule with a surface can break a specific chemical bond in the molecule with surprising precision.

The ability to selectively excite and break specific bonds in molecules would open new vistas in synthetic chemistry, allowing the creation of compounds that are difficult to synthesize via conventional chemical techniques. However, decades of research have shown that, with a few exceptions [1], when energy is put into a specific molecular bondwith a laser, for exampleit is quickly redistributed among many vibrations in the molecule long before a reaction may occur. In other words, attempting to selectively put energy into a bond usually leads to the same chemical reaction as heating the reactants on a hot plate. Surprisingly, Lukas Krumbein, at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany, and colleagues have now observed that a bond in a large molecule can be selectively broken by adding energy to the system in the simplest way possibleby colliding the molecule with a surface [2]. The result improves our understanding of the dynamics of large molecules and could offer novel ways to control their reaction products.

The idea that energy imparted during a collision can promote chemical reactionsa process sometimes called splat chemistryhas been around for decades. Researchers have shown, for instance, that the collision of argon atoms onto methane (CH4) molecules adsorbed on a surface can lead to the molecules dissociation [3]. In that experiment, the equivalence of the four CH bonds means that the collision process is not bond specific. What is significant about the work by Krumbein and colleagues is that they demonstrate the cleavage of a particular bond.

The researchers use electrospray ionization and ion-beam deposition to accelerate a 73-atom molecule called Reichardts dye toward a copper surface. Using scanning tunneling microscopy to inspect the scene of the collision, they find that when the molecule collides with the surface at translational energies of 250 eVlarger than the energy associated with thermal excitationit selectively cracks at a specific carbonnitrogen (CN) bond. Breaking this bond results in the molecule opening into a more spread-out configuration. In contrast, when the molecule is simply heated, a different CN bond is broken, which splits the original molecule into two pieces. Krumbein and colleagues also observe this lower-energy splitting reaction in some collisions, but this reaction has a lower probability than the cracking reaction.

Key to the success of their experiment is the sheer size of the molecule involved. Previous studies of surface dynamics have focused on the reactions of small molecules, such as nitric oxide (NO) or CH4. The collision-induced excitation of single bonds in such small molecules is relatively ineffective. For example, when a molecule of NO collides with a surface, the efficient compression of the NO bond would require a perfectly aligned, head-on collision geometry. With any other alignment, the molecule would behave much like an American football, hitting with its long axis at an angle to the surface [4, 5]. This off-axis geometry causes most of the translational energy to be converted into rotational energy, sending the molecule spinning away from the surface but without inducing any chemical change.

The situation is very different for Reichardts dye, named after the doctoral student who developed the molecule while searching for a compound that would change its color depending on the solvent. This large organic molecule consists of seven rings surrounding a central nitrogen atom. When a Reichardts dye molecule hits the surface, the collision doesnt compress a single bond. Instead, the collision causes the entire molecule to undergo a large-scale distortion in a very short period of timemore like a prop-comedy rubber chicken hitting a wall than like a football.

Based on simulations of their experiment, Krumbein and colleagues explain that the fate of the molecule depends on its orientation when hitting the surface. The key difference between the collision geometries is how the large-scale distortion strains the three carbon atoms surrounding the central nitrogen atom (Fig. 1). Collisions that focus the molecules distortion on one particular carbon atom lead to splitting, with the molecule breaking apart into two fragments. Distortions focused on one of the other two (symmetry equivalent) carbon atoms lead to cracking, in which the molecule hinges open but remains in one piece. Other impact configurations produce no reaction, leaving all three bonds unbroken and the molecule intact (Fig. 2).

The experiments demonstrate that, as expected, the probability of a reaction is dependent on the initial translational energy of the molecule. Faster molecules split or crack with higher probability than slower molecules. Using simulations that account for the collision process, the researchers explain the experimental observation that the more common outcome is a cracking reaction, even though splitting is the thermally favored pathway. This is not contradictory, as the reaction rate is controlled both by the activation barrier and by the probability of attaining a suitable molecular configuration for the reaction. The simulations reveal that the collisions selectively strain the central nitrogen atom in a way that promotes CN bond cleavage. In contrast, heating the molecule distributes energy randomly.

The results obtained by Krumbein and colleagues provide important new insight into the localization of energy in molecules: The large-scale distortion of the molecule focuses the energy on a single bond while simultaneously preventing the energy from rapidly delocalizingat least for the picosecond or so that it takes for the molecules geometry to stabilize after the collision. These types of large-scale deformations are common in macromolecules under strain, such as polymers, proteins, and DNA. Accounting for the way that energy is concentrated on specific bonds within these molecules will help predict how they respond to such strain. Insights such as those provided by this work are also important for understanding mechanochemistry, the coupling between macroscopic strain and chemical reactivity. Mechanochemistry underlies important phenomena, such as stress-corrosion cracking and polymer degradation under shear. An atomistic understanding of mechanochemistry is still in its infancy, but Krumbein and colleagues experiment represents a considerable advance.

Melissa A. Hines is a professor of chemistry at Cornell University. Her research focuses on understanding and controlling the chemical reactivity of surfaces to enable advances in areas ranging from photocatalysis and self-cleaning surfaces to the development of stable, high-brightness photocathodes.

Lukas Krumbein, Kelvin Anggara, Martina Stella, Tomasz Michnowicz, Hannah Ochner, Sabine Abb, Gordon Rinke, Andr Portz, Michael Drr, Uta Schlickum, Andrew Baldwin, Andrea Floris, Klaus Kern, and Stephan Rauschenbach

Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 056001 (2021)

Published February 1, 2021

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Physics - Selective Bond Breaking with Splat Chemistry - Physics

A new study suggests that high levels of chloride from industry and burning plastic waste could be responsible for enhanced haze and fog formation in Delhi and Chennai,1 leading to around half the reduced visibility in Indias capital city and having serious implications for health and the economy. The results could help researchers understand why some polluted regions are more prone to smog and cloud than others.

Many cities in India are affected by pollution, with air quality being particularly bad in winter. Particulate matter a mixture of suspended solid and liquid particles is a key atmospheric contaminant that affects millions of people across the country. The low visibility associated with haze and fog can cause air traffic delays and increase motor vehicle accidents, notes Pengfei Liu, an atmospheric chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, who led the study together with Sachin Gunthe of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. The severe air pollution also causes increases in cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological diseases, he adds. We cant tackle this air pollution problem unless we understand the chemical mechanism behind it.

It is unclear why Delhi is more affected by haze and fog than other polluted Asian cities, although a large fraction of its particulate matter is primary organic matter. Now, the international team may have found the answer. We determined the chemical composition of atmospheric fine particles in Indian cities and observed unexpectedly high concentrations of chloride, Liu says.

The team monitored the mass and chemical composition of particulate matter smaller than 1m in Delhi and Chennai in real time and then performed thermodynamic modelling to uncover the role of chloride in haze and fog formation.

They demonstrated that particulate matter grows very fast due to co-condensation of HCl, ammonia and water, explains Manabu Shiraiwa, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine, in the US, who was not involved in the study. He points out that India has a unique environment, characterised by high ammonia release from agriculture and significant chlorine emissions due to burning waste.

Winter mornings in Delhi are usually cold and humid, offering the ideal conditions for the process to take place. Gas-phase HCl emitted from plastic-containing waste burning and industrial processes can dissolve in aerosol water, explains Liu. Ammonia can then react with HCl to form ammonium chloride, stabilising chloride in the particle phase, he adds. This particle-phase chloride can absorb even more water from air, leading to a quick growth of the aerosol particles into haze and fog droplets. We estimate that this mechanism can contribute more than 50% of the visibility deterioration in Delhi.

Yafang Cheng from the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany believes that the discovery will help to develop more locally tailored strategies. The identified high chloride concentration is a special characteristic of air pollution in India, different from other megacities such as Beijing, she says. This finding has very important implications for air-pollution management in India. Besides learning from examples in other places of the world, India may now develop its own, more precise and cost-effective solution against its severe haze pollution, for example, targeting the control of chlorine emissions.

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Atmospheric chemistry discovery could help Indian cities clear away the haze - Chemistry World

A century ago, an upstart German physicist by the name of Albert Einstein turned the scientific world on its head with his discovery of the photoelectric effect, which proved light to be both a particle and a wave. Awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in physics for his work, Einstein would later contribute to theories related to nuclear fusion and fission arguably paving the way for the invention and detonation of nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear energy.

And so, when elements previously unknown to science were discovered in the chemical debris of a nuclear explosion 69 years ago, it was fitting that scientists named what they found after the great physicist adding einsteinium to the periodic table.

Now, 100 years after Einsteins Nobel prize win, chemists have finally been able to peer into the chemical behaviour of this elusive, highly radioactive element. What theyve learned could help scientists further expand our understanding of the periodic table including elements that are yet to be added to it.

Einsteinium (Es) is the 99th element in the periodic table. It was first discovered in 1952 when a thermonuclear device dubbed Ivy Mike was detonated on the island of Elugelab in the Pacific Ocean (now part of the Marshall Islands). Ivy Mikes detonation was the first demonstration of a hydrogen bomb. Such a blast creates four times more energy than nuclear fission bombs (like those dropped on Japan in 1945) and four million times more energy than the burning of a similar amount of coal.

It was in the fallout from Ivy Mikes explosion, amid the chemical debris, that atomic number 99 was found for the first time. Only about 200 atoms of this element were detected, which shows just how scarce it is. It took nine years of painstaking work for scientists to be able to synthesise element 99 in a lab, which they achieved in 1961.

The team of researchers who made the discovery thought about naming the element pandamonium, since the project team behind Ivy Mike had operated under the acronym PANDA. But in the end, they decided to honour Albert Einstein.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, very little has been known about einsteinium. An element birthed in a thermonuclear blast, its incredibly hard to experiment with due to its extreme radioactivity. Not only is it literally too hot to handle one gram of einsteinium produces 1,000 watts of energy it also emits harmful gamma rays, so working with the element requires researchers to wear protective gear at all times.

Whats more, einsteiniums most commonly occurring form (called Es-253, based on the number of neutrons in the atoms nucleus) has a half-life of only 20 days. That means that, after 20 days, einsteinium decays by half. After a couple of months, the tiny quantities of the element that scientists are able to work with practically disappear.

So its no wonder that its taken nearly 70 years for scientists to get to grips with this element. But now, a team from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have managed to pin down enough einsteinium to run some basic tests on the element breaking new ground in experimental chemistry and fundamental science.

Read more: Five chemistry inventions that enabled the modern world

In their paper, the researchers explain how they managed to use just 200 nanograms of Es-254 (a rare form of einsteinium with a half-life of 275.5 days) to run their experiments. A nanogram is just one billionth of a gram, so these experiments took place on an incredibly small scale.

Performing chemistry with einsteinium for the first time, the research team managed to synthesise a chemical compound that included the element in order to examine how it might interact with other elements in a compound. This was done under the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, which beams high-energy light at chemical compounds to enable their structure to be exposed. You can think of this method as similar to how silhouettes are formed but on an atomic scale.

One big finding was the bond distances between einsteinium atoms and other atoms around it like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Knowing einsteiniums bond distances for the first time means we can predict what other combinations of compounds featuring einsteinium will look like adding entirely new combinations to our current knowledge of chemistry.

Crucially, the researchers also managed to measure the valence state of einsteinium, which is the charge on the atom. An atoms charge controls how many other atoms it can bond to. This quantity is of fundamental importance in chemistry, determining the shape and size of the building blocks from which the universe is made. Einsteinium happens to lie at an ambiguous position on the periodic table, between valence numbers, so establishing its valence helps us understand more about how the periodic table should be organised.

Einsteinium is currently the heaviest chemical element that can be examined in this way so its exciting for chemists that new ground has been broken by this recent paper. The challenge facing future chemists is to try to synthesise heavier elements in similarly measurable quantities, revealing more about the chemicals that make up our world.

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Einsteinium: 100 years after Einstein's Nobel Prize, researchers reveal chemical secrets of element that bears his name - The Conversation UK

Paul Crutzen, the Dutch atmospheric chemist who was a co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel prize for chemistry for his work on stratospheric ozone destruction, died on 28 January at the age of 87 following several years of illness. His passing means that all three chemists who won that pivotal award for atmospheric chemistry are gone now. One of the other two co-recipients of the award, Mexican chemist Mario Molina, died just this past October, and the other joint winner, American chemist Sherwood Rowland, passed away in 2012.

Crutzen, who demonstrated that nitrogen oxides accelerate the depletion of the Earths ozone layer, popularised the term Anthropocene in 2000 to define the current geological era in which human activity is influencing the planet. He was also one of the early adopters of proton transfer mass spectrometry in atmospheric research.

Paul J Crutzen was a pioneer in many ways, saidMartin Stratmann, president of the Max Planck Society (MPG), whose Institute for Chemistrys atmospheric chemistry department was directed by Crutzen from 1980 until his formal retirement in 2000. He was the first to show how human activities damage the ozone layer, Stratmann added. This knowledge about the causes of ozone depletion was the basis for the worldwide ban on ozone-depleting substances a hitherto unique example of how Nobel prize-winning basic research can directly lead to a global political decision.

Crutzen continued his scientific activities for many years after retiring. Chlorofluorocarbon gases were banned and today the ozone layer is slowly repairing itself, thanks to his joint work with Molina and Rowland, the official Nobel prize Twitter handle stated.

Born in Amsterdam in 1933, Crutzen started elementary school just a few months after Germany invaded the Netherlands. His path to becoming an atmospheric scientist was not a straight one.

Crutzen began his career as a civil engineer and then was a computer programmer at Stockholm Universitys meteorology department. After earning a PhD in meteorology in 1968, Crutzen went on to become a professor and researcher at various prominent universities across the world, including Oxford, Chicago and California. He published more than 360 peer-reviewed scientific articles and 15 books, becoming one of the most highly cited scientists in the world, according to MPG.

In the past few years, he grew increasingly concerned about the timely societal recognition of the extent and severity of climate change, the organisation said in its 28 January statement, calling him a dedicated mediator between science, politics, and society.

Crutzen is survived by his wife of more than six decades, two daughters and three grandchildren.

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Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, who coined the term Anthropocene, dies - Chemistry World

Continuing its record on higher education buildings, Skanska USA has been picked to lead construction of the planned Frost Institute of Chemistry and Molecular Science at the University of Miami (UM) at its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida.

The approximately 90,000 sq ft project includes imaging and science research laboratories, administrative and research offices, a lecture hall, a multipurpose gathering space, and associated building support spaces.

It will bring together scientists from several molecular-based disciplines to do collaborative research work, using approaches relying on molecular design, discovery and development.

Designed by Harvard Jolly Architecture, the project is expected to break ground by the end of the year and is slated for completion in summer 2022.

The facility will seek LEED Silver Certification at a minimum, joining other Skanska built projects including the Mercedes-Benz U.S Headquarters and Town of Andover, Bancroft Elementary School.

It will be Skanskas second project for UM, having built the Patricia Louise Frost Music Studios, which was selected as Project of the Year for the Urban Land Institutes Vision Awards, in 2015.

Announcing the Frost Institute award, Skanska said spending on education building projects is projected to reach close to $108bn by next year, citing Statista.

Skanska is currently working on the University of South Floridas (USF) Research Park Mixed Use Lab & Office project in Tampa and recently delivered the USF Healths Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute in downtown Tampa.

Michael C. Brown, executive vice president and general manager of Skanskas Florida building operations, said: As a company, we continue to specialise and focus on developing research and academic buildings for universities throughout Florida that will have a positive impact in their local communities and beyond through their work and studies.

Image: The 90,000 sq ft Frost Institute will bring together scientists from several molecular-based disciplines to do collaborative research (Render courtesy of Skanska USA)

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