It’s very early here on my second day in Boston at the ACS meeting. And it’s raining. Again. Thankfully the famed American hospitality extends to a complimentary umbrella in my room so with that and my trusty but hectic schedule I’m ready to go. Except that nothing starts for another hour and a half. Must try to adjust to the time zone tomorrow.
Day one for me started with the symposium in memory of Keith Fagnou. It was really touching to hear the speakers – Hartwig, Sanford, Yu, Jacobsen – talk with great warmth and affection both about Professor Fagnou as a person and his amazing contribution to C-H functionalisation chemistry. And of course they brought us up-to-date with their own chemistry, which, in the case of Jin-Quan Yu, involved quite a lot of table salt, which seems to very useful for promoting C-H activation by weak coordination.
My highlight for the afternoon was Laura Kiessling’s talk on carbohydrate polymer assembly. Carbohydrate polymers are the most abundant organic compounds on the planet and, amongst many other functions, are responsible for making the cell walls of tuberculosis mycobacteria really strong. So by understanding the polymerization process, we could be a step closer to working out how to eradicate the disease, which has infected a staggering one third of the world’s population.
It was also the first talk I’ve been to where the speaker has called her audience science geeks.
A geek – moi?
