Peter Stang, Organic Lego Builder Extraordinaire

Stang-Cage

Originally uploaded by bibliophile_us.

Super seminar speaker last week; Peter Stang from Utah. Highlights included his suggestion for helping one to see in 3-D, that was, besides using models, to ‘crack open a nice bottle of scotch… or a few glasses of wine would help as well.” And when describing ‘why’ he does the research he does (namely using organometallic compounds to assemble shapes and polyhedra), he said: “Because its fun….but people don’t pay me to have fun. So the university, well, I teach for them, I’m dean, they’re happy with what I’m doing, but how about the government? Well, I lie to them! I make up all sorts of fancy uses for these compounds so they’ll give me money.”

Props to that! Still, very interesting and artistic chemistry, pure and inspired by a simple fascination with molecules. To be remembered.