And the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to… Chemistry!

admin — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:43:37 +0000

After yesterday’s Nobel Prize in Physics which went to two relatively young researchers (Andre Geim* and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester) for a very recent discovery (graphene, isolated in 2004), today’s Prize in Chemistry went to much older people for discoveries made 40 years ago: Richard F. Heck (emeritus professor at the University of Delaware), Prof. Ei-ichi Negishi from Purdue University, and Akira Suzuki (emeritus professor at Hokkaido University) were awarded for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis. As mentioned by the Nobel Committee, the developed reactions made it possible to synthesize many new molecules of biological and medical interest (among them taxol and discodermolide) and will continue to have a great impact on research and engineering in the future. One can speculate whether some other pioneers of palladium catalysis would also have deserved the prize (Stille, Tsuji, Trost) but it’s good to see the Nobel Prize in chemistry awarding ‘real’ chemists again!

On the live webcast visible on the Nobelprize website, the Prize announcement was followed by a live phone interview with Prof. Negishi. He let the audience know he was awaken at 5 in the morning by the phone call announcing him the good news, and that he just had time for a coffee before the interview took place. I imagine this was but the beginning of a very long day for him! Quite amusing was when a journalist asked Negishi about the impact of his discoveries for the human beings. At that, Negishi responded something like ‘Do you have any knowledge of Grignard chemistry?’ The journalist laughed before admitting that he had no clue about it, and Negishi explained the impact of carbon cross couplings in much simpler terms.

* Andre Geim is probably the first researcher to detain a Nobel Prize together with a Ig Nobel Prize, obtained in 2000 for levitating a frog with magnets.

2009 Nobel Prize in “Chemistry”

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:06:27 +0000

It is a pity Mr Nobel did not think about including a prize for biology in his final will. Today’s announcement was eagerly awaited in my department, particularly since a very member of our institute was part of the Thomson Reuters nominees, which raised considerable buzz over the last couple of weeks. We all crossed our fingers for Prof Michael Grätzel to be the awardee, but only to discover that the Prize was going, again, to… biology.

Of course, I am not critisizing the recipients‘ work (anyway, I couldn’t since I am a chemist and don’t know lots of things about ribosomes, apart from their double-potato shape they always have in basic biology textbooks) nor the fact that it deserves recognition, but the point is that the Nobel prize in chemistry went to people who actually do chemistry, say, five times in the last 10 years (2000: conductive polymers, 2001: catalysis, 2002: mass spec and NMR, 2003: cell membranes, 2004: ubiquitin and protein degradation, 2005: metathesis, 2006: eukaryotic transcription, 2007: chemistry on surfaces, 2008: GFP and 2009: ribosomes). So, what about creating a Nobel Prize in biology? They did it for Economics in the 60s…

Well now we just have to wait for next year – and hope that people working with molecules lighter than 50 kDa will be recognized as chemists. I’m quite sure there are hosts of guys working in organic synthesis, catalysis, nanotechnology or physical chemistry – to mention a few – who deserve to get the next Nobels. And regarding Grätzel… I keep my celebrating post for next year!

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And the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to… Chemistry!

2009 Nobel Prize in “Chemistry”