George Olah passed away on March 8th. He was part of the generation of scientists in the post-war 1950s who had access to chemical instrumentation that truly revolutionised chemistry.

In the previous post I described how hydronium hydroxide or H3O+…HO–, an intermolecular tautomer of water, has recently been observed captured inside an organic cage[cite]10.1002/chem.201406383[/cite] and how the free-standing species in water can be captured computationally with the help of solvating water bridges.

Understanding why and how proteins fold continues to be a grand challenge in science. I have described how Wrinch in 1936 made a bold proposal for the mechanism, which however flew in the face of much of then known chemistry.