INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF CHEMISTRY 2011

The year 2011 is being celebrated as the International Year of Chemistry by UNO and IUPAC. All the organisations related to the field of Science are celebrating it with full enthusiasm. They are emphasising and making people aware of the importance of chemistry in our daily lives as well as technological lives. We are also carrying out lot of activities.
Chemistry is very important subject and knowledge area. We always deal with chemistry knowingly or unknowingly. Everything around us is a part of Chemistry. We ourselves are chemistry. Our skin is made of protein. Our muscles are protein. Under the skin we have fat. Cell membrane is made of lipoprotein. Enzymes and hormones which run our body system are chemicals. Messeges are transmitted throughout our bodies through electrical signal and transfer of chemicals. Electricity that moves the world is nothing else but the flow of a chemical species i.e. electrons.
Water is our life. It is a chemical compound made of two elements, combined in a ratio by mass of 1: 8. We breathe in oxygen rich air. Air is a mixture of mainly two elements. We cook food. Cooking involves a lot of chemical reactions. We boil rice. We actually carry out hydrolysis, in which starch is hydrolysed to get maltose. This maltose and starch when goes inside our elementary canal, they get further hydrolysed to glucose under the process of digestion. The glucose enters the blood stream and thereby make way to the cells where they get oxidized mainly in mitochondria under cellular respiration to release tremendous amount of energy (if I am correct: 38 ATP per mole or 686 kcal/mol).
We wear clothes. Clothes are made from fabrics. Fabrics are chemically polymers - natural or synthetic. Nature moulds many chemicals so does human. Man has created a large number of chemicals to develop new building materials and a number of items of comforts. The world has turned into a global village due to multifarious contributions from Chemistry.
This year we are also celebrating 100th year of receipt of Nobel Prize by great Madam Curie. Madam Curie was certainly a genius in world of Physical Sciences. But what I want to emphasise here is her inspirational life. She struggled a lot to study. She worked as a house care taker to help her sister study and settle. Then she studied. She started her study after a gap and became successful overcoming all odds. We can not understand the pain she suffered with while pursuing her academics in an environment where girls were discriminated. Not only in her student life, but she had to suffer discrimination in her later life. How can we imagine her pain when she lost her husband, who was everything to her! How can we imbibe her feelings when she lost her prematurely born child in the same year 1911 when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! How can we assess the mother, who became a succesful mother of Nobel Laureate Irene Joliot Curie and Eve Curie!
Salute to a great Chemist and a great mother!