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From the early 17th century the advent of physical and chemical sciences developed two important movements toward the explanation of all vital phenomena: the Iatrochemical and Iatromechanical Schools. The important research of their representatives such as Jan Baptist van Helmont, John Mayow, Robert Boyle, Gian Alfonso Borelli, Richard Lower, and Albrecht von Haller, followed by the discovery of the atmospheric gases, provided a fecund soil for the leading work of Lavoisier in respiratory physiology.

A career in science is shaped by many factors, one of the most important being our tastes in research. These typically form early and are shaped by subsequent successes and failures. My tastes run to microscopes, chemistry, and spatial organization of cytoplasm. I will try to identify where they came from, how they shaped my career, and how they continue to evolve. My hope is to inspire young scientists to identify and celebrate their own unique tastes.

"My greatest achievement has been to combine being a teacher, a researcher, and a popularizer of science for over 50 years. My worst nightmare is to find myself dumbstruck when I am about to give a lecture …︁" This and more about Sir John Meurig Thomas can be found on page 10938., (Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

The ability to regulate gene expression is essential for controlling metabolic events in a cell. Proteins that function like molecular switches respond to fluctuations in the environment to maintain homeostasis. The operon model, proposed by Jacob and Monod, provides a cogent depiction for how gene expression is regulated. A molecular mechanism for the regulation followed shortly with the theory for allosteric transition. Over the past half-century, the details of the lac operon and the allosteric model have been tested using genetic, biochemical, and structural techniques. Remarkably, the principles originally put forward 50 years ago remain essentially unchanged. Models for the operon and the theory of allosteric transitions are two of the most profound discoveries of molecular biology., (Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Franz Schneider (13.09.1812-29.11.1897) in 1850 was appointed the first lecturer on "Chemistry for physicians" by the Viennese university. Two years later he accepted the professorship in the military medical schools in the "Josephinum" from where he shifted to the philosophical faculty as professor of "Common and medical chemistry". Soon after this start in 1870 he became unable to continue his work because of an explosion during experiments. Thus in 1876 the emperor called Schneider to the Austrian public health administration as director. In the following twelve years he achieved great successes in his duties. As a scientist he had worked on various topics of organic and inorganic chemistry. But beyond that Schneider succeeded in imparting to his assistants the modality of scientific work and the way of hygienic thinking. Thus his scholars Josef Nowak, Florian Kratschmer and Max Gruber were well prepared to become Austria's first university hygienists.

In 1886, Italian chemist Arnaldo Piutti isolated, for the first time, d-asparagine, the enantiomer of the known l-asparagine. He obtained 100 g of D-asparagine from 6500 kg of vetches. Using an ingenious synthetic scheme, Piutti established the chemical structure of asparagine and demonstrated that his isolation of D-asparagine from plants was not the result of the racemization of L-asparagine during the extraction procedure. He found a striking difference in the taste of asparagine: L-asparagine was without taste, while D-asparagine was intensely sweet. This was the first example of enantioselectivity in a receptor-mediated biological activity. Receptors constitute one of the most important and most intensively studied phenomena in biology, and enantioselectivity in receptor-mediated activity, including at the sweetness receptor, is today an important and commonly seen aspect of receptor function. Therefore, Piutti's discovery, although made ca. 15 years before the emergence of the receptor concept, was a milestone. The publication of Piutti's asparagine work prompted several eminent scientists, including Louis Pasteur and Arthur Cushny, a leading pharmacologist of the time, to remark on the importance of the discovery. Piutti also carried out investigations in many other fields, e.g., other organic compounds and reactions, pharmaceuticals, alimentary products, radioactivity, noble gases, and spectroscopy. Considerable progress has been made in recent decades concerning the biology and chemistry of sweet taste, but the details of the interactions of chiral molecules with the sweetness receptor remain poorly understood. Piutti and his discovery are largely forgotten today; they deserve the attention of the chirality and receptor "communities.", (Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The 2012 Nobel Prize for chemistry has been won by Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka for their work on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Those receptors (3% of human genome) evolutionary are derived from one 1 or 2 ancestors and are able to recognize external message as different as light, odorants, gustative molecules and intercellular messages such as hormones and neurotransmitters. They are targets of 30-40% of therapeutic drugs. Robert J. Lefkowitz has been one of the leaders of the field from more than 40 years and has built several key concepts of the domain. Brian Kobilka was successful, in 2007, in producing a crystal structure of the β2-adrenergic receptor. This paved the way for the production of a series of almost 50 GPCR crystal structures both in inactive and active forms., (© 2012 médecine/sciences – Inserm / SRMS.)

Williamson serendipitously discovered (1851) a new and efficient way to produce esters using ethyl iodide and potassium salts and in doing so elucidated the molecular mechanism behind ether formation. Lassaigne (1820) made the analogy between sulphovinic and phosphovinic acids and demonstrated the existence of phosphovinic acid, while Pelouze (1833) synthesised monoethyl phosphovinic acid. Finally 1848 Voegeli produced diethyl phosphovinic acid and the first neutral ester of phosphoric acid, the triethyl phosphate (TEP). The successes of Lassaigne and Pelouze in producing phosphovinic acids and Mitscherlich's theory of isomorphism fuelled the search for the vinic acids of arsenic, phosphorus neighbor in the periodic system. This short report attempts to identify the (less known) pharmacists and chemists involved in the quest for both arsenovinic acids and the neutral esters of arsenic and pyroarsenic acids.

There are exposed the main landmarks of the scientific biography of Professor Aleksandr Pavlovich Brestkin, connected with his investigations in the field of chemistry of high pressures, physiological chemistry of caisson disease, kinetics of esterase catalysis, and in comparative enzymology of cholinesterases.

In the course of the 18th century a new type of scientifically educated functional elites developed, who were trained to administer mines. The educational project that led to the formation of a corps of mining engineers was part of a programme of administrative and economic reforms that led to a new configuration of bonds between state, economy and science. At the same time the status of this new group of experts was predicated substantially by the new emerging corpora of the scientific, technological and cameralist knowledge of the period between 1760 and 1800. The aim of this paper is to discuss this group using the example of a leading expert in the context of the mining and metallurgy of this period. Anton von Ruprecht (1748-1814) was strongly grounded in the social and epistemic context of the Habsburg mining bureaucracy, which employed his scientific and technical savoir faire to serve their mercantile goals in several areas of mining expertise.

Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784) is well known as one of the major chemists in the eighteenth century as a theoretician and a teacher. He is also known for his works on dyeing. This paper presents a new face of Macquer. He proposed a theory on mordants in dyeing as early as 1775. Besides his activity at the Académie des sciences, he played an important role in Government as the commissioner of dyeing from 1766 where he established close links with artisan inventors. Académicien chimiste at the royal Manufactory of Sèvres from 1757, he was also the inventor of French porcelain. His notebooks show his organization, method, courage, passion and obstinacy in the search for the paste for hard porcelain. He also proposed an interpretation of its formation. Macquer was both a theoretician and a practical expert in dyeing as well as in porcelain making. He managed to bridge the gap between science and art.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Prussian State supported savants who combined learned inquiry into nature with technical work. Members of the physical and mathematical classes of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences were involved in State projects such as surveying for the construction of canals, chemical analysis of Silesian iron, production of porcelain and of beet sugar. Some of these men were truly 'hybrid' experts living both in the worlds of State-directed manufacture and academic natural inquiry. Among these savant experts there was a particular sub-group that is at the centre of this paper: mining officials who were also recognized as mineralogists, geologists and chemists. The paper describes and analyses the training and the varied technical and scientific activities of these 'savant officials'. At the centre of attention are the travels of inspection of the mineralogist and mining official Carl Abraham Gerhard (1738-1821) in the late 1760s. I argue that Gerhard's travels of inspection were at the same time geological travels and that savant officials like Gerhard made a significant contribution to the fledgling science of geology.

The endeavor to understand the workings of the human body is as old as civilization; but it is in the intellectual movement of the Renaissance that its actual scientific study began in earnest and has not ceased growing since then. It was in the 16th century that the study of organs was launched and with it that of the kidney, which was then conceived as an accessory organ to clear the excess water ingested with food. The study of the structural basis of kidney function was launched by Bartolomeo Eustachio (1514-1574); the elements of its physiology and pathology were promulgated by Jean Fernel (1497-1558), and that of the chemical study of urine and of the principal cause of kidney disease then, calculi, instigated by Joan Baptista Van Helmont (1577-1644). The methodological approaches of these and their contemporary investigators, which were crystallized and formulated by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), opened the gates of the Scientific Revolution that followed in the 17th century, beginning with that of describing the circulation in 1628 by William Harvey (1564-1657) that would finally free the kidney from the shackles imposed on it as a mere accessory organ to the liver in Galen's physiology., (© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

This paper investigates the theory of nutrition of Herman Boerhaave, the famous professor of medicine and chemistry at the university of Leyden. Boerhaave's work, which systematized and synthesized the knowledge of the time, represents a shift from a humoral to a hydraulic model of the body in medicine and culture around 1700. This epistemological reconfiguration of early modern physiological thinking is exemplified with respect to the changing meanings of milk. While over centuries the analogy between blood and milk played an essential role in understanding the hidden workings of the nutritional faculties, following the discovery of the blood circulation the blood-milk analogy was transformed into a chyle-milk analogy. Yet Boerhaave's interpretations show that the use of new knowledge tools did not simply displace the old ways of reasoning. Instead, analogies continued to serve as epistemic instruments. Old theories and new insights overlapped, and contemporary knowledge assimilated past ideas., (Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)