User:Bengt Norden/Bengt Nordén

Bengt Johan Fredrik Nordén, born May 15, 1945 in Lund, is a Swedish chemist.

Bengt Nordén graduated 1967 with a Master of Science degree in chemistry, theoretical physics and mathematics from Lund University and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1971 from Lund university where he became Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 1972. In 1979 he was appointed to the Chair Professorship of Physical Chemistry of Chalmers University of Technology.

Nordén’s research concerns optical Linear dichroism spectroscopy of macroscopically oriented, mainly bio-macromolecular systems. He has developed novel DNA-binding ligands, such as bis-intercalating compounds and peptide nucleic acids (PNA), and demonstrated DNA-ligand reorganisations between groove- binding and intercalation binding geometries involving extreme activation energies and recognition due to kinetic (in contrast to thermodynamic) selection. “Site Specific Linear Dichroism by Molecular Replacement” methodology applied to DNA complexes with RecA and human RAD51 proteins has revealed fundamentals of genetic recombination mechanism and is also applied to study structure of membrane proteins in a true membrane environment.

Nordén was councellor for Science and Technology to the Swedish Government in 1991-1994; Chairman of the selection committee for the European Science Foundation Young Investigator Awards 2003-2006; Chemistry editor of the Swedish National Encyclopedia 1988-, Chairman of the Chemistry Section of the Swedish Natural Science Research Council 1996-2000. He is currently Chair of the Research Council of the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and Editor in Chief of The Quarterly reviews of biophysics.

Nordén is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 1991 and was member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry from 1995 to 2004, the Committee’s chairman from 2000 to 2003 and the Academy’s Chemistry Section chairman 2004-2009. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, The Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg, The National Academy of Sciences of Germany (German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina), the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in Finland, The Norwegian Academy of Science, The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).

Norden is a founder of Molecular Frontiers, a global organization with objective to early identify breakthroughs in science and to stimulate young people’s interests in science. Molecular Frontiers has in its Advisory Board many yet very research active Nobel Laureates