Trio Wins Nobel Chemistry Prize
American Richard Heck and Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a chemical method that has allowed scientists to make medicines and better electronics.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the award honors their development of palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic systems. The academy called that one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today, and one that is used by researchers world-wide and in commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used to make electronics.
A friend tells me that the types of reactions they initially described are taught in
organic/organometallic chemistry as coupling reactions, and are named
reactions (Heck coupling, Negishi and Suzuki reaction).
Congratulations to the winners, and to the Nobel Prize committee for awarding it to people who actually did something.
