6th year of Science on Tap
Thanks to the continued support of UNM, Explora and the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History
A time to eat, drink & talk about science!
on Central
Join us Thursday, September 7 at 5:30
Raman spectroscopy: A 90-year story of the intersection of science and technology
University of New Mexico
Professor
Chemical and Biological Engineering
Director
Center for Biomedical Engineering
A surgeon needs to determine the boundary between
normal and diseased tissue. An art restorer needs to figure out what kinds of
coatings were applied to an 18th century masterpiece over the last few
centuries. A security officer needs to figure out if a powder contains
explosives. A Food and Drug Administration inspector needs to determine if
every tablet in a blister pack of imported pharmaceuticals was correctly
manufactured. What do these situations have in common? They are all currently
addressed using Raman spectroscopy. Early 2018 will mark the 90-year
anniversary of the discovery of the Raman effect. The effect, named after its
co-discoverer C.V. Raman, occurs when light passes through a transparent
material and a very tiny fraction of the light changes color. The scientific
community quickly recognized this result as a profound discovery, and Raman
received a Nobel Prize only two years later. However, it’s taken 90 years of
research and development for the technological impact of the discovery to begin
to be fully realized. I will briefly discuss the Raman effect and Raman
spectroscopy, and then describe the decades long path of discovery and
technology development that has enabled the current widespread use of this
method. The trajectory of Raman spectroscopy from its origin in fundamental
science to applications in diverse fields spanning from medicine to art is a
compelling story that illustrates how interactions between different areas of
science and engineering can lead to technologies with broad societal impact.
Andrew P. Shreve is Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at UNM. His research interests include development of biosensors, optical instrumentation, and spectroscopy or modeling of energy and charge transfer in biological, nanomaterial and chemical systems. Amongst other topics, he has co-authored many scientific papers in the area of Raman spectroscopy, including experimental and theoretical studies of crystalline materials, carbon nanotubes, and proteins.
