The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences yesterday named Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa as winners of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The Academy said in a statement in Stockholm that they won the prizes for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.
It said “the 2016 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry had miniaturised machines and taken chemistry to a new dimension”.
According to the statement, the machines are a thousand times thinner than a hair strand.
The academy said the trio, based in France, United States and the Netherlands, developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy was added.
“Molecular machines will most likely be used in the development of new materials, sensors and energy storage systems”.
The chemistry prize was the third of this year’s Nobel Prize awards to be announced.
Endowed by Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel, each award is worth $930,000.
