2013 Nobel Prize Lectures in Chemistry

You can also get Warshel's lecture slides here

Learn QM/MM from Chris Cramer

Chris Cramer's Essentials of Computational Chemistry is one of the most popular textbooks on the topic. In honor of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Chris has made his chapter on QM/MM publicly available for a limited time (Update: this has now expired).

Chris is also active on twitter and I can highly recommend you follow him for a nearly daily dose of witty comment.

Nobel reactions

You may have heard this already: this years Nobel prize in chemistry went to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis".  Like last year, molecular modeling and animation is here to bring the science behind the prize to life.  This time, through the very excellent Chemtube3D (a Molecular Modeling Basics favorite) and its page on on organopalladium chemistry.

Ribosome Animation

For a while I thought I would be only science blog that would make it through October without mentioning the Nobel Prize. But via Chemical Blogspace I came across this video interview of the 2009 Nobel Prize co-winner in Chemistry Venki Ramakrishnan posted on The Sceptical Chymist (note: spell-check when you name your blog!):

During the interview they show some stunning molecular animations of the ribosome in action, which are credited to Said Sannuga and Ramakrishnan. I wonder ... Sure enough there are several very interesting animations on Ramakrishnan's web site. The screencast above shows a few seconds of one of them. For the rest, go to the site and have a look.