US, Japanese researchers win Nobel in chemistry

STOCKHOLM - Richard F. Heck of the US and Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki of Japan were Wednesday awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for their research on a method used to create advanced chemicals, it was announced in Stockholm.

The trio won for their work on the development of “palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

The 2010 laureates used the element palladium as a catalyst in order to kickstart a chemical reaction with carbon. They later gave name to reactions known as the Heck reaction, the Negishi reaction and the Suzuki reaction.

They can be used to form carbon-based molecules that are as complex as those created by nature and can be applied in the pharmaceutical industry for making new drugs or in the electronics industry for producing extremely thin monitors.

It is the fifth time that a Nobel has been awarded in the field of carbon-based chemistry since 1912, with the academy noting that “carbon-carbon bonds are the basis of the chemistry of life itself”.

The trio is to share the prize, worth 10 million kronor (about $1.5 million).

Heck, 79, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware in the US. He told Swedish radio that he has “retired” and now lives in Manila, the Philippines, with his Filipino wife.

“I had no idea that I was going to receive the award,” he said, adding he now mainly tends to his garden and is not engaged in active research.

Negishi, 75, has conducted most of his work in the US, and is a chemistry professor at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was born in Changchun, now part of China.

In a conference call organised by the academy, Negishi said the methods developed by the trio contributed to “versatility” and “made it possible to synthesise a wide variety of medicines”.

He also noted that he had not taken out patents on his research.

Suzuki, the oldest of the three at 80, is a professor emeritus at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

The chemistry prize is the third Nobel to be announced this year.

Russian-born scientists Andre Geim, who is now a Dutch citizen, and Konstantin Novoselov, who has dual British-Russian citizenship, Tuesday shared the physics prize for a so-called super material called graphene, a form of carbon.

The medicine prize was awarded Monday to British researcher Robert Edwards for his pioneering work on in-vitro fertilisation.

Nobel prizes are also awarded for literature, peace and economics. The literature prize is due to be announced next, Thursday.

The award ceremonies will be held Dec 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, first endowed the prizes.