By Nathan Collins
Michael Fayer surveys the world around him and sees something that most of us do not: chemistry. It’s not that Fayer, a professor of chemistry, sees no value in anything but academic chemistry research. It’s just that when it comes down to it, chemistry has more to do with ordinary human experience than any other field. To Fayer, everything from color to nutrition to the greenhouse effect is, first and foremost, chemistry.
What it’s like...Physics is a social endeavor. There’s beauty in neuroscience. Chemistry is all about building things – and it’s all hard work. Find out more about what it’s like to be a researcher at Stanford. |
“Chemistry just permeates our lives,” he said.
He is not alone in this view. For Noah Burns, it is the basis of life. For Laura Dassama, it is the path to advances in health. And for Hemamala Karunadasa, chemistry is the foundation of civilizations. Chemists call their discipline “the central science” for a reason, because it touches everything in our daily lives. Here, Fayer, Burns, Dassama and Karunadasa share how they got into chemistry, the joys and frustrations of their academic lives and what chemistry, the central science, means to them.
Fayer is the David Mulvane Ehrsam and Edward Curtis Franklin Professor in Chemistry. Burns is an assistant professor of chemistry and a member of Stanford ChEM-H. Dassama is an assistant professor of chemistry and an Institute Scholar of ChEM-H. Karunadasa is an assistant professor of chemistry and a Center Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Photographs by L.A. Cicero
Michael FayerFayer came to Stanford in 1974 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. Here, he explains why chemistry interests him more than black holes, why chemists call it the central science and what it’s actually like in a chemistry lab. (Hint: There’s a lot of plumbing.)
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Hemamala KarunadasaKarunadasa joined the Department of Chemistry in 2012 and built a lab centered on developing materials for clean energy. She spoke about how she – slowly – came to love chemistry, how molecules define civilizations and the need to show others what life as a scientist is really like.
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Laura DassamaDassama joined the Stanford faculty just last year. She spoke about coming to chemistry after assuming, like many chemists, she would be a doctor, how launching a new lab is like starting a new business and how she sees the world – even health – in terms of molecules.
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Noah BurnsBurns has been at Stanford since 2013 and focuses on molecules called natural products. He spoke about the romantic, even artistic side of doing chemistry, the curiosity that drives him and how it’s the people around him that make the endeavor worthwhile.
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Media Contacts
Nathan Collins, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-9364, nac@stanford.edu