09 October 2024

When the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2024 was to be announced, LiU Professor Henrik Pedersen was live on TV to give comments on the prize and the laureates.

Henrik Pedersen
Henrik Pedersen

In the beginning of autumn, Henrik Pedersen was contacted by SVT’s science editorial team. They were looking for a chemist who could comment on the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They had received a tip from a chemist in Lund who often appears on TV.

"After a brief phone interview, they wanted me in the studio", says Henrik Pedersen.

What do you think about the winner?

"A fantastic and exciting prize! It’s great that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences dared to award both the Physics and Chemistry prizes to machine learning. Proteins are really not my research field, but it’s incredibly exciting when you start thinking about what we can understand about proteins and do with proteins thanks to the research of this year’s Chemistry winner", says Henrik Pedersen.

Do you have a personal favorite you hope will win the prize someday?

"Yes, the inventor behind Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), which I research, Tuomo Suntola. He invented ALD in 1974, and today it is an indispensable technology for the manufacturing of all chips in all the electronics we have.

Being on national TV was something Henrik Pedersen found enjoyable.

"It’s a really fun challenge to explain research so that everyone can understand without it becoming so simplified that it becomes ridiculous. Being live on TV in this way was really a great experience."

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