Chemistry as the science of matter and of its transformations, and life is its highest expression. This is what Nobel laureate Professor Jean-Marie lehn said while giving a broad definition to Chemistry here on Sunday.
Delivering the 10th KIIT Foundation lecture on “From Matter to life: ChemistryIJ Chemistry!”, Prof lehn said Chemistry provides structures endowed with properties and develops processes for the synthesis of structures.
It plays a primordial role in our understanding of material phenomena, in our capability to act upon them, to modify them, to control them and to invent new expressions of them. Prof lehn won Nobel for Chemistry in 1987 and is currently associated with the University of Strasbourg, France.
He said in the beginning was the Big Bang, and physics reigned. Then Chemistry came along at milder temperatures; particles formed atoms; these united to give more and more complex molecules, which in turn associated into organized aggregates and membranes, defining primitive cells out of which life emerged, he added.
He also said Chemistry is also a science of transfers, a communication centre and a relay between the simple and the complex, between the laws of Physics and the rules of life, between the basic and the applied. Earlier, KIIT and KISS founder Dr A Samanta delivered welcome address.