WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University professor Ei-ichi Negishi picked up his Nobel Prize in chemistry during ceremonies in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10.
Negishi is the Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. He shares the award with Richard Heck of the University of Delaware and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Japan.
“The award of the Nobel Prize to Dr. Negishi is a great honor for him and for Purdue, and is especially meaningful to all the students and faculty who have learned from him or worked with him,” said France A. Cordova, Purdue president, who attended the ceremony in Norway.
“Receiving a Nobel Prize is the ultimate recognition for a lifetime spent questioning, exploring, experimenting,” said Negishi.
In addition to drugs that include the painkiller naproxen and the cancer treatment taxol, the Negishi reaction has been used to produce fluorescent marking that has been essential for DNA sequencing and in creating materials for thin LED displays. He won the prize for his contributions to the development of metal-based reactions called palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling. More than 25 percent of all chemical production in the pharmaceutical industry relives on these reactions.
