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Merino gold fashion show launches year of chemistry


Strictly EMBARGOED until 7pm, Wednesday 9 February 2011

Merino gold fashion show launches year of chemistry

The 2011 International Year of Chemistry, in honour of Marie Curie, the first woman Nobel laureate, was launched in style at the Michael Fowler Centre on Wednesday night.

The launch event - a merino gold fashion show - was hosted as part of the MacDiarmid Institute's international conference in Wellington this week.

A collaboration between MacDiarmid Institute chemists at Victoria University and fashion designers at Massey University resulted in a fashion collection based on the unique properties of pure merino wool coloured by bonded clusters of gold atoms.

The luxury wool has attracted interest and requests for samples from top fashion houses in Europe. The designer of the winning collection, Greer Osborne from New Plymouth, will have the opportunity to travel to the UK and visit and work with a number of leading fashion designers. The visits have been organised by the British Society of Interior Design and Wools of New Zealand (UK).

The technique for forming and bonding the gold clusters to wool is just one of many applications of nanotechnology - working with material on tiny scales of one billionth of a meter - and illustrates the technical skills and creativity of New Zealand chemists and physicists working in the field. Nanotechnology is a meeting place of chemistry, physics and biology.

Dr Di McCarthy, Chief Executive of our national science academy, the Royal Society of New Zealand, officially launched the Year of Chemistry. She noted the number of talented young women chemists coming through, following in the footsteps of Marie Curie and our own Chemistry Nobel Prize winners, Lord Rutherford, and Alan MacDiarmid.

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Following the fashion show, Sir Richard Friend, a successor of our own Ernest Lord Rutherford as director of the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, gave a talk about the "creative tension" between science and technology.

Sir Richard is a keynote speaker at the fifth international conference of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, opened by the Prime Minister on Tuesday. The Institute is one of 8 centres of research excellence selected for special government backing; it encompasses scientists all around New Zealand and is hosted by Victoria University.

Another Year of Chemistry launch event this week in association with the conference (9am, Friday 11 February) is bringing 1500 science students from the lower North Island to Wellington to see a "real live Nobel Prize winner", Sir Anthony Leggett. He is also speaking at the conference.

About the Year of Chemistry For more information on events, and lots of interesting information on New Zealand chemists and chemistry, see www.yearofchemistry.org.nz This site, and the launch events, are supported by the Royal Society, the MacDiarmid Institute, the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry, Industrial Research Limited,

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