Nobel winner shares secrets of success

Penn's own international celebrity gave a performance yesterday. Nobel Prize winner Alan MacDiarmid, a Chemistry professor, gave a speech entitled "Synthetic Metals: A Novel Role for Organic Polymers" in Logan Hall yesterday afternoon before a packed lecture hall. The audience, including mostly graduate students and faculty, received MacDiarmid warmly. MacDiarmid, along with colleagues Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa, was recognized with the award this past fall for creating plastics that can conduct electricity while he was working at Penn in the 1970s. He sprinkled the lecture -- consisting of in-depth scientific explanations of his research -- with amusing anecdotes. MacDiarmid, who came to Penn close to fifty years ago, also stressed the importance of collaboration in science, saying that the Nobel prize was awarded to three men associated with Penn -- an organometallic chemist, a polymer chemist and a physicist -- as a result of their interdisciplinary efforts in scientific research. Provost Robert Barchi, who introduced MacDiarmid, put it best when he said, "This Nobel Prize is Penn work." Yesterday's event was part of the Provost's Lecture Series. After the lecture, Chemistry Department Chairman Hai-Lung Dai said of his colleague, "We've anticipated this moment for many years. It's been like a long-awaited dream." And Earth and Environmental Sciences Department Chairman Robert Giegengack -- who has known MacDiarmid for thirty-three years -- added, "He is a good scientist, a good teacher and a good person. It's a great thing." Sophomore Will Lavery, who "won" a ticket to the lecture in his Organic Chemistry class, enjoyed the lecture as well. "It's fascinating how the substance of his research is leading to this new explosion of technology," Lavery said. Following the lecture, a reception was held so that audience members could chat with the renowned scientist. At one point, a woman cautiously asked MacDiarmid if she could hold his Nobel medal -- to which he responded by running to his briefcase, pulling out the heavy piece of gold and passing it around to his admiring fans. MacDiarmid's success was driven by, as he puts it, "Color, curiosity and money... if you're not interested, your chances of making it are pretty darn small. And without money, you can't do research." And what does he mean by color? "I like pretty things," MacDiarmid said, explaining his attraction to shiny metals. MacDiarmid continues to teach both graduate and undergraduate classes at Penn and he plans to teach a freshman chemistry course next year. His advice to young students: "Be sure that you like at least 80 percent of what you are going to specialize in. You'll never like 100 percent." Hard work and perseverance have contributed to his success as well. "I am a very lucky person," MacDiarmid said. "And the harder I work, the luckier I seem to be."