13 September 12

Beth found an appropriate occasion to celebrate today, and chose the tie to go with it. Organic chemist (Sir) Robert Robinson was born on Sept. 13, 1886. He won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research with anthocyanins, the compounds that give plants their colors (as reflected in this tie). In the early 1950s, Robinson famously remarked that, among those developing the analytical technique of paper chromotography, "They are not chemists there, just a lot of paper hangers."