Japanese chemist Ei-ichi Negishi who won the Nobel prize for creating a approach for generating complicated chemical compounds important for manufacturing drugs and electronics has died aged 85, his US university mentioned.
Negishi died on Sunday in Indianapolis, Purdue University mentioned in a statement on Friday, adding his family would lay him to rest in Japan sometime next year.
The Manchuria-born scientist graduated from the prestigious University of Tokyo and worked at Japanese chemical giant Teijin prior to going to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship in 1960 to study chemistry. He joined the Purdue faculty in 1979.
In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize for chemistry along with Richard Heck of the University of Delaware and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University.
Through the trio’s work, organic chemistry has created into “an art form, where scientists produce marvellous chemical creations in their test tubes,” the award citation mentioned.
Heck laid the groundwork for bonding carbon atoms by utilizing a catalyzer to market the course of action in the 1960s.
Negishi fine-tuned it in 1977 and it was taken a step additional by Suzuki, who located a sensible way to carry out the course of action.
Negishi likened their work to playing with Lego constructing blocks.
“We found catalysts and created reactions that allow complex organic compounds to, in effect, snap together with other compounds to more economically and efficiently build desired materials,” he was quoted as saying in the university statement.
“Legos can be combined to make things of any shape, size and color, and our reactions make this a possibility for organic compounds.”
According to Purdue, their work is extensively made use of, from fluorescent marking necessary for DNA sequencing to agricultural chemical compounds that shield crops from fungi to components for thin LED displays.
“The world lost a great and gracious man — one who made a difference in lives as a scientist and a human being,” Purdue President Mitch Daniels mentioned.
“We’re saddened by Dr. Negishi’s passing but grateful for his world-changing discoveries and the lives he touched and influenced as a Purdue professor.”
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