Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

A book on quitting may seem like a downer to end my list of recommendations, but if that is what you think, you’ve got quitting all wrong.

Quitting is not about endings, but about clearing the page so there is space to write the next story. In this thought-jostling book, Duke brings the reader into the lives of notable characters who stayed in the game too long and the high price they paid for not walking away.

Throughout her engaging narratives, she infuses research on why we hang on too long and offers reflective questions to get us out of the muck. Threaded amongst the chapters are life lessons disguised on quips like when we quit on time, it likely feels like we are giving up too early, and when it looks like a tie between sticking it out and cutting our losses, we are almost always better walking away.

Each week people email me stories of their toxic work environments, asking for advice on how to make it better. My got to answer, backed by research,  is  - “If possible, quit!.” Quitting just may be the new winning. 

-Karthik Gurumurthy

This year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was once again awarded to three scientists, all of whom contributed significantly to the field of "click chemistry" and bioorthogonal chemistry:

• Carolyn R. Bertozzi: American, received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. Currently, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship at Stanford University and is an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
• Morten Meldal: Danish, earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Technical University of Denmark in 1986. He is presently a Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
• K. Barry Sharpless: American, obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1968. He continues to serve as the W. M. Keck Professor at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Interestingly, this was Sharpless' second Nobel Prize in Chemistry, making him only the fifth person to achieve this feat.

These three individuals were jointly recognized for their groundbreaking work on "click chemistry," a concept developed by Sharpless that involves creating simple and reliable chemical reactions for joining molecules together. Bertozzi further expanded this concept by developing "bioorthogonal reactions" that can occur inside living organisms, paving the way for studying biological processes at the molecular level. Their combined efforts revolutionized chemical synthesis and offered powerful tools for drug discovery, diagnostics, and other applications.

• Sharpless laid the foundation for click chemistry by identifying key principles for fast and efficient reactions with minimal side-products.
• Meldal independently discovered an essential click reaction involving cycloaddition, demonstrating its versatility and expanding its potential applications.
• Bertozzi took click chemistry from the lab to living organisms by developing bioorthogonal reactions that work specifically within biological systems. This enabled her to map important molecules on cell surfaces and develop tools for targeting cancer cells.