The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2010 was awarded jointly to Richard F.
Heck, Eiichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki "for palladium-catalyzed cross
couplings in organic synthesis". It was stated that ‘there is an
increasing need for complex chemicals. Humanity wants new medicines that can
cure cancer or halt the devastating effects of deadly viruses in the human
body. The electronics industry is searching for substances that can emit light,
and the agricultural industry wants substances that can protect crops’. The Nobel
Prize in Chemistry 2010 rewards a tool that has improved the ability of
chemists to satisfy all of these wishes very efficiently: palladium-catalyzed
cross coupling.
Following a tradition in
organic chemistry, the reaction pioneered by Dr. Heck carries his name, and it
is known throughout the world of chemistry as the Heck reaction. In the
language of chemistry, it is a palladium-catalyzed carbon cross-coupling
reaction.That title may not do full justice to his discovery of a process that,
according to the Nobel Prize organization, “would transform modern organic
chemistry.”
Richard Heck, who shared
the Nobel Prize in chemistry for creating a reaction that has been widely
hailed for its prolific usefulness in many areas of modern life, such as drug
development, electronic display screens and DNA sequencing, died a couple of
days earlier on Oct. 10 in the Philippines. He was 84.
Dr. Heck’s death in Manila
was reported by the University of Delaware, where he was a professor
emeritus.According to the Reuters news agency, quoting relatives of Dr. Heck’s
late wife, who was Filipina, his death followed years of illness. Ailments
included diabetes, slight dementia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
There are problems in life
~many of them dwell around money. People
think that a jackpot windfall can only change their fortunes. But – it may not. Some lives had become notably
worse after they got super rich, and they managed to lose it all quite
quickly.Money isn’t always the answer to all of life’s problems. In fact,
sometimes money can create even more problems – as, it seems, is too often the
case for lottery winners. It’s not uncommon for lottery winners to end up with
even less than they had before their windfall and sometimes they even end up
with nothing at all. This is not the
fault of the World but their own making - lack of financial planning and
foolhardy spending habits linked to an inability to manage such enormous and
unexpected spending power.
A lottery win has huge
power to change people for the better – or for the worse. Some people manage it well, while some even
donate a portion of their winnings to a noble cause. …. … .. understandable when it happens to an
illiterate, foolish person ~but this report in Times of India of date, is shocking.
TOI reports that Nobel
laureate Richard Heck died in Manila on Saturday under tragic circumstances as
he was reportedly turned away from a private hospital because of unpaid bills.
Heck the Nobellaureate in 2010, was 84
and had been suffering from several ailments.
Heck had retired in the Philippines in 2006 along with his Filipina
wife, Socorro NardoHeck. Socorro died two years after Heck won his Nobel prize,
said Michael Nardo, Socorro's nephew, who had been looking after Heck since his
wife's death, according to Reuters. The couple was childless.Heck was relying
on his monthly pension of $2,500 to get by, the nephew added.Two personal
nurses took turns taking care of him in his home in recent months.
One of the nurses, Jane
Rose Pido told GMA News that Heck was rushed to a private hospital due to
severe vomiting, but was refused admission due to unpaid bills. “It was painful
to see, that the man was fighting for his life but he was left to die, because
he did not have money. How could it end up like that? We didn't know which
hospital to take him to, so much time was lost.He could have been revived,“Pido
reportedly said. Pido said they were forced to take him to a public hospital,
where his vital signs deteriorated within hours, until he died.
Heck was affiliated with
the University of Delaware in the US when he developed his work on palladium as
a catalyst, called the Heck reaction, in the 1960s and early 1970s, according
to Reuters. The two Japanese scientists came through with their variants of the
same process in the late 1970s.
Grim reminder of the
wildest twists that life can offer !
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
14th Oct 2015.
Photo credit : Copyright
© The Nobel Foundation 2010
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