Karplus, Martin (1930-…), an Austrian-American chemist, shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry for creating computer models of complex chemical systems. Karplus developed the models in cooperation with the prize’s other winners. They are the biologist Michael Levitt and the Israeli-American chemist Arieh Warshel .
Modern computer simulations are based on two different models of physics . They are classical Newtonian physics—pioneered by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton —and quantum physics . Newtonian physics describes the interaction of matter and energy on scales larger than single atoms . But quantum physics must be used to understand interactions on subatomic scales, scales smaller than atoms.
Some of the earliest computer models used Newtonian physics to model large molecules at rest. Other early models used quantum physics to show chemical reactions between smaller molecules. Both types of programs were limited by the computing power available. Modelling a reaction between large molecules could take days with the technology in use at the time.
Karplus was in charge of a lab at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was working to develop computer models of chemical reactions using quantum physics. In 1970, Warshel joined Karplus’s lab. Warshel and Levitt had previously developed a computer program that could model large molecules using Newtonian physics.
By 1972, Karplus and Warshel had developed a program that combined the two types of physics. Their program modeled large molecules using Newtonian physics. But it modeled key parts of such molecules using quantum physics. The program could thus model certain large molecules undergoing chemical reactions. Warshel and Levitt later reunited to further develop a program that could model large molecules undergoing a chemical reaction.
Martin Karplus was born in Vienna, Austria, on March 15, 1930. His family fled the country before it was annexed by Germany in the lead up to World War II (1939-1945). They moved to the United States. Karplus received a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1950. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 1953. He then studied at Oxford University in England until 1955. He taught at the University of Illinois and then at Columbia University in New York City before joining the faculty at Harvard in 1966.
