Sauvage, Stoddart and Feringa win Nobel Prize 2016
Q. 2016 Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L Feringa for the design and synthesis of which machines?- Published on 07 Oct 16a. Cyber
b. Kinetic
c. Molecular
d. None of the above
ANSWER: Molecular
The three were awarded for their design and synthesis of molecular machines.
- Jean-Pierre Sauvage is a French coordination chemist
- Sir James Fraser Stoddart is a Scottish chemist working in the area of supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology
- Bernard L Feringa was a synthetic organic chemist who specialises in molecular nanotechnology and is also well known in the field of homogenous catalysis.
- Developing the world’s smallest machines, the trio have worked on molecules with controllable movement which can perform the task when energy is added
- First step towards a molecular machine was taken by Sauvage in 1983 when he succeeded in linking two ring shaped molecules together to form a chain called cayenne
- Stoddart in 1991 took another step when he developed a roxatane which threaded the molecular ring onto the thin molecular able and demonstrated that the ring was able to move along the axle.
- Feringa was the first person to develop a molecular motor when he got the molecular rotor blade to spin continually in the same direction
- Using these motors, he rotated a class cylinder 10000 times larger than the motor
- He also developed a nano car
- Nobel laureates in Chemistry this year therefore took molecular systems out of the equilibrium’s stalemate and into energy filled states when movements can be controlled.
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry was first awarded in 1901 to J van’Hoff for his discovery of laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions
- The 2015 award was won by Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA.
