© ELAINE PERKSMatthew Powner studied chemistry at the University of Manchester in large part because he was good at it. “I think it felt like the path of least resistance,” he says. But then he discovered organic chemistry, and its pictorial style of problem solving captured Powner’s imagination.
In organic chemist David Proctor’s lab during his fourth year at Manchester, Powner developed tools for building organic molecules that would react with a compound called samarium iodide to form a specific chemical architecture. He graduated with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the spring of 2005 and, after a summer internship at nearby AstraZeneca, he returned to Manchester to earn his PhD under chemist John Sutherland. While Sutherland hadn’t been at the top of Powner’s list of possible Manchester advisors, it didn’t take long for the renowned origins-of-life researcher to reel Powner in. “I’d always thought of organic chemistry as a tool [for designing new compounds], but John made me think about whether we could use organic chemistry to think about why the ...
