Manfred Wigen, 91; Nobel Prize chemist
Manfred Eigen, who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in chemistry for showing how to measure the speeds of reactions that had seemed impossibly fast, died Feb. 6. He was 91.
His death was announced by the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, Germany, which Eigen founded in 1971. The institute did not say where or how he died.
Eigen was sometimes said to have measured the immeasurable. He was credited with helping to reveal the intimate details of chemical reactions that occur within time periods so brief as to seem all but nonexistent.
In chemical reactions, individual elements or compounds combine to create other elements or compounds. But the time scales over which that combination occurs vary widely. Metal may rust over weeks or months; explosive reactions involving gunpowder or dynamite happen so rapidly as to seem instantaneous.
Such reactions were described as “immeasurably fast.”
For many researchers, uncovering their secrets seemed beyond the reach of science. In speaking in English of these reactions, Eigen struggled at times for a way to characterize their swiftness. At a lecture in Britain, he used to recall, he was advised to call them “damned fast reactions.”
Time intervals in these reactions are on the order of millionths or billionths of a second. Some are even faster. But, according to the Planck Institute, Eigen “was firmly convinced that nothing in chemistry was immeasurable” and that the problem was a matter of developing and applying the proper techniques.
“Perhaps more than anybody else, Manfred Eigen understood how to think out of the box and successfully pursue new scientific directions,” Herbert Jackle, the institute’s emeritus director, said in a statement.
Eigen’s breakthrough was developing the process known as chemical relaxation. In essence, this entailed applying a quick nudge - a jolt of energy - to a chemical system that had settled into equilibrium. Much of his work entailed beaming high-frequency sound waves into chemical systems.
The jolt pushed the system out of balance, and the term “relaxation” connoted its settling back into stability. From spectroscopic measurements of the energy absorbed by the system, it was possible to learn the parameters of extremely rapid reactions.
Manfred Eigen was born in Bochum, Germany, on May 9, 1927. His father was a chamber musician, and Manfred developed a lifelong affinity for music, ultimately choosing science over piano.