The Hindu : Karnataka News : Risk is crucial to innovations in science: Nobel laureate

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 23, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

Risk is crucial to innovations in science: Nobel laureate

By Our Staff Reporter

Alan J. Heeger — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

BANGALORE, FEB. 22. A physicist who became a chemist and is now turning to biology, the Nobel laureate Alan J. Heeger says risk and good taste are crucial to innovations in science.

They certainly paid off for him. It led him and fellow scientists Alan G. MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 for their discovery and development of conductive polymers.

"Conducting polymer material was very poorly characterised in the 1970s. We did not even know where the atoms were," he said, delivering a lecture on "Risk and Innovation in Science — A personal history of the journey to the Nobel Prize," at the 10th Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Lecture, organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.

"When I started to do research on it my physics friends thought I was crazy," he said.

`Good taste'

Prof. Heeger said choosing a problem with "good taste" is key to making a big impact. There are many problems in science and almost all of them are interesting but not all are important.

He said he and his partners decided to work on developing conductive polymers because prior generations of polymers were insulators and did not have applications in electronics.

New directions

The Nobel laureate said he believes that it is important to "go out in new directions" and collaborate with scientists of different disciplines.

While the risks are greater, he said the chances of discovering something are higher. Absence of background information, he said, should never deter anyone.

"After all, even Watson and Crick were not molecular biologists by training when they set out to discover the double helix."

Prof. Heeger emphasised that inter-disciplinary research is inherently risky because it requires working in areas in which one may not have a complete understanding.

Providing an example, he spoke about his work on bioelectric detection of DNA to screen for genetic errors and prevent counterfeiting of drugs.

"I am learning biology for it. It is a big risk because I don't have a solid core understanding, but that only makes it all the more interesting."

Solar cells

Prof. Heeger is also involved in developing solar cells with high efficiency. So far, he and his associates have developed solar cells with an efficiency of 5 per cent and they are looking to improve it.

"If we can develop cells with an efficiency of 15 per cent it will have a great impact on solving the energy problem," he said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka

News Update

Stories in this Section