Positivity: Nobel Prize for “Chemical Magic” Took 34 Years of Work
“Magic” my foot: 19 years from discovery to fruition, and another 15 to international recognition, showing that properly applied research can do wonders for the world’s environment:
Chemical magic nets Nobel for U.S., French scientists
Elegant chemical detective work now used to make the manufacture of fuels, fibers and pharmaceuticals cheaper and “greener” delivered the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday to two Americans and a Frenchman.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences named the winners: Yves Chauvin, 74, of the Institut Français du Pétrole; Robert Grubbs, 63, of the California Institute of Technology; and Richard Schrock, 60, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
….. The award recognized work by all three on metathesis (met-TATH-uh-sis), an important chemical reaction. “Metathesis is an example of how important basic science has been applied for the benefit of man, society and the environment,” the academy said in its announcement.
The scientists’ work “really has had a tremendous impact and is now used in labs everywhere,” says chemist Ronald Breslow of Columbia University. “And it taught us a lot of new chemistry — really one of those rare things that is both tremendously useful and tremendously interesting.”
The academy noted that manufacturers widely use the reaction; applications are as diverse as the manufacture of drugs to the production of sports clothing.
Discovered in the 1950s, metathesis allows chemists to custom-make carbon compounds — the building blocks of plastics as well as of living things — in fewer steps and with less waste.
Chauvin first explained the chemical recipe for the reaction in a 1971 paper that showed how some metal catalysts in theory could trigger the reaction. Rather than going through many steps, these catalysts quickly swapped carbon molecules with other carbon compounds, he found, in a way chemists had never before considered possible.
After that work, Schrock developed the first catalyst to trigger the reaction in 1990. Two years later, Grubbs came up with a family of metal catalysts that remained stable in air and water.
Grubb’s catalysts led to an explosion of interest in metathesis, Breslow says, as they allowed widespread use of an environmentally friendly version of the reaction in labs worldwide. Previously chemists could create such chemistry only under exacting conditions or in many steps with dangerous solvents.
“What we will see in 10 to 20 years is that this award was a tipping point for ‘green’ chemistry (the environmentally friendly use of chemicals),” says chemist Paul Anastas of the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute. “At the fundamental molecular level, we can meet environmental and economic goals at the same time.”
