Nobel Peace Prize

Richard Heck, an American scientist and longtime resident of the Philippines, won the 2010 Nobel Prize for chemistry for developing a chemical process for organic synthesis, now widely used in various fields such as medicine and electronics.

The Royal Academy of Sciences announced in Sweden that a trio of chemists— Heck and Japanese scientists Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki — were being recognized for developing palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings, one of the most sophisticated tools used today in scientific research worldwide. The process of carbon bonding is necessary in the synthesis of more complex molecules.

Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki developed variants of a process of binding carbon atoms by using the element palladium as a catalyst. According to the prize committee, heir work is now instrumental in various applications, such as: testing potential drugs for cancer; creating new antibiotics; breakthroughs in DNA sequencing, and making thinner computer screens. The Nobel Prize comes with a $1.5 million award, which Heck will share with his two fellow researchers.

Negishi and Suzuki later developed variants of Heck’s method in 1977 and 1979, respectively.

The Nobel Prizes began in 1901, after Alfred Nobel — a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite — died in 1896.

He left the bulk of his fortune towards the establishment of a series of awards in various fields.

Nobel laureates receive their awards every year on the anniversary of Nobel’s death, on December 10.

-excerpts from GMANews.TV