MANILA, Philippines - Dr. Richard Fred Heck, who together with two other scientists, won this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry, formally met representatives of the UP community at a luncheon hosted by president Emerlinda Roman at the Executive House recently.
Heck is an American chemist noted for the discovery and development of the Heck reaction, which uses the metal palladium to catalyze organic chemical reactions that couple aryl halides with alkenes. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, received the Nobel Prize for their work in developing new ways to synthesize complex organic molecules by way of what are called palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings.
The Nobel Laureate retired from the University of Delaware in 1989, where he remains Willis F. Harrington Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He presently lives in the Philippines with his wife Socorro, a Filipina.