Countdown To The 2013 Chemistry Nobel Prize Events

As announcement of the Nobel Prizes draws near each autumn, speculation about that year’s likely winners of the science prizes tends to proliferate around office watercoolers and, increasingly these days, on online social networks.

To indulge in a little Nobel Prize crystal-ball gazing, Chemical & Engineering News this year hosted its first-ever Google Hangout—a live Web broadcast—on Oct. 3. The Hangout, dubbed “Countdown to the Chemistry Nobel Prize!” was hosted by C&EN Senior Editor Carmen Drahl and Associate Editor Lauren K. Wolf. The magazine staffers discussed likely front-runners for this year’s science Nobels as well as the art of Nobel prognostication with three guests: Neil Withers, features editor for Chemistry World magazine; C&EN advisory board member Paul J. Bracher, an assistant professor of chemistry at Saint Louis University who forecasts Nobel Prizes at the blog Chembark; and Simon Frantz, Editor of BBC Future and a former senior editor of nobelprize.org.

The group accepted questions during the 45-minute broadcast via Twitter, at the hashtag #chemnobel. All five participants took a stab at guessing the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to be announced on Oct. 9, and discussed the award’s importance as chemistry’s one guaranteed day in the public eye.

The archived broadcast, located on YouTube, is embedded above.