Luca Turin

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Luca Turin (born November 20, 1953 in Beirut ) is an Italian biophysicist and author who deals with the sense of smell , perfumery and the fragrance industry.

biography

Turin is the child of Argentine-Italian parents, he grew up in France, Italy and Switzerland. He studied physiology and biophysics at University College London (UCL), where he received his doctorate . In 1988 Turin started working for Henri Korn at the Pasteur Institute . He lost his job after accusing Korn that some of his research was based on forgery. Later he worked at the National Institutes of Health in North Carolina . He then moved to London and taught biophysics at University College London.

In 2001 he was employed as a technical manager at the newly founded company Flexitral in Chantilly (Virginia) . From 2009 to 2011 he conducted research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from 2011 to 2013 at the Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Center in Athens, and in 2014 he was visiting professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Ulm University .

Odor perception through vibrations

Turin took up a theory by Malcolm Dyson (1938) that the olfactory sense does not function through shape recognition by means of receptors , but like a spectrometer , i.e. This means that odors can be distinguished by molecules based on the different vibrational frequencies . However, the theory is controversial. An important consequence of this thesis would be the isotope effect that z. For example, the normal and the deuterated variant of a connection would have to smell different due to the different oscillation frequency - despite the same shape.

Haffenden u. a. showed in a 2001 study that humans can distinguish the smell of common and deuterated benzaldehyde . In 2011 Turin and his colleagues published an article in PNAS that fruit flies can differentiate between odorous substances and their deuterated variants. In 2013, Turin and his colleagues published a study in PLoS ONE that people can easily differentiate between ordinary and deuterated musk by smell. There is a threshold value, humans can only distinguish the scent from a proportion of 14 deuterium atoms, ie 50% deuteration. According to Turin, the sense of smell is a biological method of spectroscopy and would therefore be an example of quantum biology .

literature

  • Chandler Burr: The Emperor of Scent. A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses. Random House, New York 2002, ISBN 0375507973 .
  • Chandler Burr: The Heretic's Nose. In: NZZ Folio . June 2003.

Works (selection)

Books

  • Luca Turin: Perfumes. Le guide (french) 1992, ISBN 978-2-86665-163-3 .
  • Luca Turin: The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell . Ecco, New York 2006, ISBN 0-06-113383-3 .
  • Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez: Perfumes: The AZ Guide - Hardcover . Penguin, 2008, ISBN 978-0-670-01865-9 .
  • Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez: Perfumes: The AZ Guide - Paperback (new reviews (~ 450) and new Top 10 lists) . Penguin, 2009, ISBN 978-0-143-11501-4 .
  • Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez: The little book of great perfumes. The one hundred classics (translation by Miriam Mandelkow, Frauke Czwikla and Christian Detoux). Zurich: Dörlemann, 2013, ISBN 978-3-908777-86-1 .

items

  • From July 2003 to July 2010, Luca Turin wrote a monthly column with the title “Fragrance Note” in the NZZ Folio .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ The nose of the heretic NZZ article from June 2003
  2. ↑ Declan Butler: Long-held theory is in danger of losing its nerve . In: Nature . 449, No. 7159, September 13, 2007, pp. 124-125. bibcode : 2007Natur.449..124B . doi : 10.1038 / 449124b . PMID 17851481 . ; Michel de Pracontal: Woman à l'Institut Pasteur? Savants on the bord de la crise de nerfs . In: Le Nouvel Observateur . No. 2238, September 27, 2007, p. 110.
  3. ↑ "Je leur ai expliqué la situation. J'ai dit que le devoir d'un scientifique était d'établir la vérité et que je m'étais trouvé dans un laboratoire dont le directeur agissait comme un faussaire. On m'a répondu que j'avais cinq jours pour me trouver un autre poste, de préférence hors de France! " (Luca Turin, as quoted by Michel de Pracontal in Le Nouvel Observateur )
  4. ^ Burr, Chandler: The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses . Random House, New York 2002, ISBN 0-375-50797-3 , p. 33.
  5. ^ A b Nina Sinatra, The science of smell , The Tech , MIT, April 23, 2010
  6. ↑ Rogue Theory of Smell Gets a Boost . In: News @ Nature , December 7, 2006. Archived from the original on December 9, 2013  .; Jennifer C. Brookes et al: Could Humans Recognize Odor by Phonon Assisted Tunneling? . In: APS (Ed.): Physical Review Letters . 98, No. 038101, January 16, 2007, p. 038101. arxiv : physics / 0611205 . bibcode : 2007PhRvL..98c8101B . doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.98.038101 . PMID 17358733 . ; Shin-ya Takane et al: A structure - odor relationship study using EVA descriptors and hierarchical clustering . In: RSC Publishing (Ed.): Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry . 2, No. 22, 2004, pp. 3250-3255. doi : 10.1039 / B409802A . PMID 15534702 .
  7. ↑ LJW Haffenden et al: Investigation of vibrational theory of olfaction with variously labeled benzaldehydes . In: Elsevier (Ed.): Food Chemistry . 73, No. 1, 2001, pp. 67-72. doi : 10.1016 / S0308-8146 (00) 00287-9 . see also [1]
  8. ↑ Flies sniff out heavy hydrogen: Nature News . Retrieved May 23, 2013 .; Molecular vibration-sensing component in Drosophila melanogaster olfaction . Retrieved May 23, 2013.
  9. ↑ PLOS ONE: Molecular Vibration-Sensing Component in Human Olfaction . Retrieved May 23, 2013.
  10. ↑ Jason Palmer: Quantum biology: Do weird physics effects abound in nature? . In: BBC . Retrieved May 23, 2013  .; Study Bolsters Quantum Vibration Scent Theory . In: Scientific American , 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Turin, Luca
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian biophysicist and author
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Beirut