Is smell a quantum phenomenon ?

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• Dr Luca Turin from Biomedical Sciences Research Center Alexander Fleming, Athens Greece
• Friday 21 June 2013, 16:00-17:00
• Kapitza Building Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Myriam Ouberai.

Our sense of smell is extraordinarily good at molecular recognition: we can identify tens of thousands of odorants unerringly over a wide concentration range. The mechanism by which this happens is still hotly debated. One view is that molecular shape governs smell, but this notion has turned out to have very little predictive power. Some years ago I revived a discredited theory that posits instead that the nose is a vibrational spectroscope, and proposed a possible underlying mechanism, inelastic electron tunneling. In my talk I will review the history and salient facts of this problem and describe some recent experiments both on fruit lies and on humans that go some way towards settling the question.

This talk is part of the Nanoscience Centre Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Infectious Diseases
• Dobson Group - General Interest
• Kapitza Building Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics
• Nanoscience Centre Seminar Series
• School of Physical Sciences
• School of Technology

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