Sabbatical trip to Europe – Part 2 (Switzerland)

The second stop of my Europe trip was Switzerland. In Zürich, I visited places where Boris Belousov (the discoverer of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction I am using in my lab) lived and studied during his time in exile in the early 20th century. But the theme of that part of my science history project keeps validating “Searching for a ghost”.

None of the buildings mentioned in publications still exist. And searching for original document is two archived did not provide any new information. Therefore, two impressions from Zürich: the beautiful Zürich train station and the street sign of the street Belousov supposedly lived in.

From Zürich, I traveled to Les Diablerets in the southwest of Switzerland to attend the Gordon Research Conference on Oscillations and Dynamic Instabilities in Chemical Systems. This is a beautiful location at 1200 m to interact with scientists from all over the world and to spend the free afternoons. One afternoon, I ‘ran’ up the switchback road to the Col de la Croix and took several hiking trails back to the village – to be back in time for a poster session.

After the conference, I walked towards the Lake Geneva to take the ‘train’ at the last possible ‘train station’ before the track winds into the next valley. It was a beautiful hike to relax the brain.