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Nobel Prize of 2010 In Chemistry
By KTM Metro Reporter
October 6, 2010: Richard Heck: an American, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki: Japanese have jointly owned the Noble Prize of 2010 in chemistry for developing one of the most sophisticated tools called palladium-catalyzed cross couplings. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has said that the tools the Noble laureates have developed are widely used for the commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used to make electronics.
The BBC NEWS report has the following report on the Nobel award:
The Swedish academy has said it is a "precise and efficient" tool that is used by researchers worldwide, "as well as in the commercial production of for example pharmaceuticals and molecules used in the electronics industry".
Such chemicals included one found in small quantities in a sea sponge, which scientists aim to use to fight cancer cells. Researchers can now artificially produce this substance, called discodermolide.
Organic chemistry has built on nature, utilizing carbon's ability to provide a stable skeleton for functional molecules. This has paved the way for new medicines and improved materials. To do this, chemists need to be able to join carbon atoms together, but carbon atoms do not easily react with one another.
The first methods used by chemists to bind carbon atoms together were based on making carbon more reactive. This worked well for synthesizing simple molecules, but when chemists tried to scale this up to more complex ones, too many unwanted by-products were generated.
The method based around the metal palladium solved that problem: in it, carbon atoms meet on a palladium atom, and their proximity to one another kick-starts the chemical reaction.
Heck, 79, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, US; Negishi, 75, is a chemistry professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and 80-year-old Suzuki is a professor at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.
Professor David Phillips, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said these metal-based "coupling" reactions had led to "countless breakthroughs". He added: "The Heck, Negishi and Suzuki reactions make possible the vital fluorescent marking that underpins DNA sequencing, and are essential tools for synthetic chemists creating complex new drugs and polymers."
