Congratulations to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel on receiving the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!

Today, computers are used in pretty much every field of scientific research. Computers are ubiquitous in our personal lives as well, and it's hard to imagine a time when we used to do something simple like writing a letter without the aid of a computer. At one point, complex scientific modeling and calculations also had to be done without  computers. If you've been to a science museum, you might have seen models of chemical molecules made with plastic balls and sticks. They are good to look at but painstaking to make. Science without computers must have been so hard!

We have come a long way in just a matter of a few decades, and one of the instrumental advances in chemical computing has been recognized in this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Laureates devised computing methods that use both classical and quantum physics, thus helping advance our understanding of chemical processes. The Nobel committee has concisely explained that they have received the prize “for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.”

Martin Karplus works at the Université de Strasbourg in France and Harvard; Michael Levitt, Stanford; and Arieh Warshel, University of Southern California. While Dr. Karplus and Dr. Warshel are affiliated with chemistry departments, Dr. Levitt is a professor at Stanford's medical school.

Trivia:

So far, 105 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry have been awarded to 166 Laureates. In 2012,Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka of the United States jointly received the award “for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors.” Frederick Sanger is the only Laureate who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice. Only four women have been awarded the prize so far. While the Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Laureates for their contributions to different branches of the subject, a survey reveals that there has been a leaning toward breakthroughs in physical chemistry and its subcategories, in chemical structure, in several areas of organic chemistry, as well as in biochemistry. 

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