The National Institute of Chemistry (in
Slovene: ''Kemijski Inštitut'') in
Ljubljana
Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center.
During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...
is the second largest
natural sciences
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
research institute in
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
(the country's largest being the
Jožef Stefan Institute
The Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS, JSI) ( sl, Institut "Jožef Stefan") is the largest research institute in Slovenia. The main research areas are physics, chemistry, molecular biology, biotechnology, information technologies, physics, reactor ph ...
). Research at the National Institute is divided into two major fields: life sciences and materials science. Among its 11 departments,
the Department of Materials Chemistry (D10) is the biggest department in the field of materials science.
History
The institute was established in 1946 as part of the
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( sl, Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti (SAZU)) is the national academy of Slovenia, which encompasses science and the arts and brings together the top Slovene researchers and artists as members o ...
with the purpose of developing technologies for processing coal into coke that was needed in the
heavy industrialisation period of
Slovenia's history after the Second World War.
In 1953 it was renamed the ''Boris Kidrič Institute of Chemistry'' in honour of the first president of the
Slovenian socialist government,
Boris Kidrič
Boris Kidrič (10 April 1912 – 11 April 1953) was a Slovene politician and revolutionary who was one of the chief organizers of the Slovene Partisans, the Slovene resistance against occupation by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy after Operatio ...
(1912–1953).
In 1956 the institute's first infrared spectrometer (a Perkin Elmer 21) was purchased, which made it possible to begin in-depth research in various fields of the Institute’s activities.
In 1992, following the country’s independence Slovenia's ''National Centre for High-resolution NMR Spectrometry'' (known as the NMR Centre) was established at the institute.
Employees and equipment
The institute's ~350 employees, of which ~140 have PhD degrees, perform cutting edge research work using equipment such as a Karl Zeiss Supra 35 VP Electronic Microscope with EDX analysis, a high resolution powder
x-ray diffractometer, an 800 MHz
NMR spectrometer and a cryo-TEM microscope Glacios™; these are the only ones of their kind in Slovenia. The NMR spectrometer is the first of this kind of instrument to be found in the
new member states of EU.
Major achievements
One of the institute's major achievements of recent years is a 2013 synthetic
protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...
that folds itself into a tetrahedron — a pyramid with a triangular base measuring just 5
nanometres
330px, Different lengths as in respect to the molecular scale.
The nanometre (international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: nm) or nanometer (American and British English spelling differences#-re ...
along each edge - which can be used as container for delivering drugs on a
nanoscopic scale
The nanoscopic scale (or nanoscale) usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1–100 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The nanoscopic scale is (roughly speaking) a lo ...
. It was synthesized by
Roman Jerala.
Protein gets in on DNA's origami act: Engineered bacteria make self-assembling tetrahedra
''Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'', 28 April 2013
References
{{Authority control
Education in Ljubljana
Research institutes in Slovenia