ON 5 October, two days before the Nobel prize committee honoured the IAEA for keeping nuclear weapons in check, it made another bold statement by paying tribute to 鈥済reen chemistry鈥�.
The Nobel prize for chemistry went to three organic chemists 鈥� Yves Chauvin of the French Petroleum Institute in Rueil-Malmaison, Robert Grubbs of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and Richard Schrock of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for furthering an organic reaction called 鈥渕etathesis鈥� 鈥� meaning 鈥渃hanging places鈥�. In these reactions, double bonds between carbon atoms are broken and re-formed such that groups of atoms can be made to switch places.
鈥淭he Nobel prize was another bold statement, paying tribute to 鈥榞reen鈥� chemistry鈥�
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In 1971, Chauvin uncovered the 鈥渞ecipe鈥� for these reactions. In 1990, Schrock produced the first efficient metal-compound catalyst for metathesis. And two years later, Grubbs developed a better catalyst that was stable in air and so could be used widely.
Per Ahlberg, an organic chemist at Gothenburg University in Sweden and member of the Nobel committee for chemistry, says these catalytic reactions cut the number of steps required to synthesise compounds such as drugs and plastics, and produce higher yields. It 鈥渃ontributes to a 鈥榞reener鈥� chemistry鈥�, he says.
