Former UD prof wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Research into linking carbon wins former Delaware professor and his fellow researchers $1.5 million in prize money.

Richard Heck will share the $1.5-million award with fellow researchers Akira Suzuki of japan and Ei-Ichi Negishi from Purdue University.

Heck, who is the Willis F. Harrington Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware, and his fellow researchers won the prize for their findings in “palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.”  According to the Nobel Foundation, the research is used worldwide by other researchers and in commercial producing of pharmaceuticals and electronics. Through their research the three men discovered “more efficient ways of linking carbon atoms together to build the complex molecules that are improving our everyday lives”, according to the foundation.

UD President Patrick Harker says, “The University of Delaware is exceptionally proud of Prof. Richard F. Heck and his ground-breaking research in the field of chemistry.”  Provost Tom Apple, who was a UD graduate student in chemistry while Heck was teaching at the school says, “This is a tremendous accomplishment for Prof. Heck and his colleagues, acknowledging the development of a tremendously sophisticated tool that will aid scientists to make potential cancer drugs and medicines.”