Nobel Winner for Chemistry, Richard Heck

Very interesting story of a Nobel Laureate.  I wonder if he's teaching in one of the universities there?  What an honor!

---

Subject: Nobel Winner for Chemistry, Richard Heck, lives in RP He’s the only Nobel winner living in RP By Tarra Quismundo Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 03:13:00 10/08/2010 MANILA, Philippines — “Am I the only Nobel Prize winner in the Philippines ?” the 79-year-old American chemist, walking around with a cane, joked as reporters and photographers flocked to his rented Quezon City bungalow. Richard Heck, one of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry this year, lives quietly in a crowded neighborhood. Until the news of the awards broke the other day, no one could have known that a chemistry genius was living behind the low red gates on the corner of an L-shaped street, where neighbors had hung their wash to dry in a maze of clotheslines. Settling in the Philippines in 2006 after years of travel around the world, Heck and his Filipino wife, Socorro, got the call of their lives on Wednesday, just before they sat down for supper. “It (the award) took a long time. It was slow. In fact, I was not expecting to receive any award. I was sort of giving up, not that I thought I should get one,” said Heck, who retired in 1987 after teaching and doing research work as a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware . Heck and his fellow winners—Japanese scientists Purdue University’s Ei-ichi Negishi, 75, and Akira Suzuki, 80—separately made outstanding contributions in organic chemistry, a field whose basis is carbon, one of the essential elements of life and also of innumerable industrial synthetics. Heck and the two Japanese scientists will share a $1.49-million prize for their work.They developed a process known as palladium-catalyzed cross coupling, a means of knitting carbon atoms together so that they form a stable “skeleton” for organic molecules. It has allowed chemists to synthesize compounds to fight colon cancer, the herpes virus and HIV, as well as smarter plastics that are used in consumer applications, such as ultra-thin computer monitors. ‘They happen by accident’ “It’s a new way to make organic compounds used in drugs, dyes and many others,” said Heck, who finished his undergraduate degree and doctorate at the University of California , Los Angeles . “You don’t plan these things. They happen by accident. I was just lucky, I guess,” said the Massachusetts-born chemist, the only son of a housewife and a salesman. Heck and Socorro have been married for 31 years. He was visiting Manila as a tourist when he met her in her mother’s canteen at the Malacañang compound, where she was working as her mother’s assistant. They married in 1979 after a one-month courtship. They are childless. Long overdue Calling the Nobel Prize his life’s biggest achievement, Heck said: “I’m certainly happy I was able to do something that was of use. Many people work for years and don’t even find anything that’s useful.” Socorro thought the award for her husband, her senior by 20 years, had been long overdue. For the past two years, she said she had been praying every week at the Baclaran and Quiapo churches, hoping the recognition for her husband would finally come. She cried upon receiving Wednesday’s surprise call from Stockholm . “You never know. Maybe he would have been long gone from this earth and still he hadn’t gotten the award (Malay mo, wala na siya sa daigdig, hindi pa niya nakukuha),” Socorro said half in jest in Filipino. No change in lifestyle “Wow, I really haven’t heard any figure before,” Heck said when reporters told him he could receive up to $500,000 (or almost P24 million). “I haven’t thought about it. I’m not going to spend it all on one place for sure.” “The problem is they always give it to you when you’re too old,” he quipped. For Socorro, the amount would not change the way they live. But at least they could use part of the money to pay their P11,000 monthly rental. The thought of buying their own house doesn’t appeal to Socorro, who said they wouldn’t have anyone to leave it to, anyway, if the time came for them to go. __._,_.___ __,_._,___

--

---

-->