Oxygen: UW symposium builds on play by noted chemists

In the world around us, oxygen is a powerful player, aggressively making and destroying other substances. Eager to acquire electrons, oxygen can slowly create rust or suddenly explode into flame. Within our bodies, it supplies life-giving energy – but also makes death-dealing changes.

On Saturday, March 29, oxygen – its history and its mystery – will be discussed in a free public symposium at UW–Madison. The event, which runs from 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., is sponsored by the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy. Eight talks will be featured. They will deal with historical perspectives on oxygen’s discovery, as well as current research on oxygen, ranging from its role in aging to its potential to produce cleaner industrial processes. The talks will be punctuated by several impressive chemical demonstrations.

The symposium is being presented in conjunction with the University Theatre’s staging of the play Oxygen through the month of April. The play revolves around which of three eminent scientists of the 1700s – Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier or Karl Wilhelm Scheele – can truly claim discovery of the essential gas. The play was written by two noted chemists, Carl Djerassi of Stanford University and Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University. Both will make presentations at the symposium.

The symposium will also feature Marc Fink and members of the Pro Arte Quartet, who will present a brief sample of music by Mozart, a contemporary of the discoverers of oxygen. In addition, the UW Memorial Library will have on exhibit through April 30 a special selection of rare books and manuscripts dealing with 18th century chemistry. (Details follow.)

Although the symposium is free, advance registration is required. Registration forms are available on line at www.scifun.org, or contact the UW Dept of Chemistry at 1101 University Ave, Madison 53706. Phone (608) 263-2424. A box lunch may be ordered for $8. Registration deadline is March 10.

Other sponsors of the Oxygen Symposium are the UW–Madison College of Letters and Sciences and the Department of Chemistry; UW Memorial Library; the Wisconsin Section of the American Chemical Society; and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. A brief summary of symposium speakers and their topics follows.

Speakers and topics for the oxygen symposium

• Professor Patricia Kiley, Biomolecular Chemistry, UW–Madison: Over hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s atmospheric oxygen levels have changed. Bacteria are among the few organisms that adapt readily to living at different oxygen levels or “tensions.” This has interesting implications for bacterial disease control and for the engineering of new pharmaceuticals. (608) 262-6632.
• Professor Richard Weindruch, Medicine, UW Medical School: High metabolic rates increase the production of an organism’s oxygen free radicals, which are essential to life, but also accelerate aging. Reduced caloric intake is the only known “antidote.” (608) 256-1901.
• Professor Shannon S. Stahl, Chemistry, UW–Madison: Industrial processes requiring the selective addition of oxygen atoms to materials often rely on helper compounds that are toxic to the environment. Using molecular oxygen – the form found in the air – to carry out these reactions would be ideal, but is a potentially explosive situation. Finding the right catalysts could change the picture. (608) 265-6288.
• Professor Thomas Broman, History of Science, UW–Madison: Lavoisier’s understanding of oxygen grew in part from the work of earlier scientists who showed that acid-base reactions involved the exchange of quasi-elemental units (today’s electrons), a behavior similar to oxygen’s. (608) 263-1562.
• Professor Brian G. Fox, Biochemistry, UW–Madison: The complex metabolic pathways of living cells enable them to use atmospheric oxygen as a combustion agent at room temperature and with high efficiency. Some of these biological pathways may be applied to solving industrial and environmental problems. (608) 262-9708.
• Professor Alan Rocke, History, Case Western Reserve University: Peculiar circumstances of geography, time, scientific experience and personality influenced the relatively simultaneous discovery of oxygen by three 18th-century chemists. (216) 368-4681.
• Professor Roald Hoffmann, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, and co-author of Oxygen: Lavoisier’s wife played a crucial role in his scientific research. She and her times are depicted in a slide show based on art of the period. (607) 255-3419.
• Professor Carl Djerassi, Chemistry, Stanford University, and co-author of Oxygen: One way to teach science and talk about its culture is through fiction or drama, such as the play Oxygen, which literally smuggles science to the audience via an entertaining format. (415) 474-1825.