Gabba gabba! One of us! One of us!

Following up on my earlier post on Roger D. Kornberg’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, I want to call your attention to this comment from the esteemed Pinko Punko:

Well, in the press conf. Dr. Kornberg stated he absolutely and first and formost views himself as a chemist, and his training (Ph.D.) was under a world famous chemist. He considers himself a physical scientist whose goal is to understand the mechanism at the molecular level of a protein machine. Now, perhaps this is somewhat simple chemistry as many of the steps boil down to hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interactions. You will also note in the history of the Chemistry prize, many nucleic acid-transaction relating research programs have been awarded in addition to post-translation modification of proteins, essentially what many would consider biochemistry. He was on many people’s shortlist for the Chemistry prize, perhaps just not those [who] consider themselves primarily chemists. Dr. Korberg referred to Chemistry as the “Queen of the Sciences” and the fundamental basis for molecular understanding.

(Bold emphasis added.)
So, since he:

1. Trained as a chemist,
2. Uses chemical methods to study the systems he studies, and
3. Acknowledges chemistry as the Queen of the Sciences,

I, for one, am satisfied that Kornberg is a chemist.
(He didn’t need the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on top of those three to convince me, but it’s not like I’m going to make him feel awkward for having one.)