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| The right mix: Eiichi Negishi (left) and Akira Suzuki show off their Nobel Prize medals for chemistry Friday at the Stockholm Concert Hall. KYODO PHOTO |
Negishi, 75, a professor at Purdue University in Indiana, and Suzuki, 80, a professor emeritus at Hokkaido University, are the first Japanese Nobel winners since four were honored in 2008 and bring the total number of Japanese who have earned Nobel Prizes to 18.
Negishi and Suzuki are also the sixth and seventh Japanese to win for chemistry.
After the ceremony, they attended a banquet hosted by the Nobel Foundation that drew 1,300 people, including Swedish royal family members.
At the end of the banquet, Negishi gave a speech in English on behalf of the chemistry laureates.
"We are deeply honored to be recognized with this wonderful distinction. For me, receiving this honor is a 50-year dream come true," he said.
Negishi and Suzuki, along with American Richard Heck, won for their work on reactions to create complex organic compounds, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
The tool "has vastly improved the possibilities for chemists to create sophisticated chemicals, for example carbon-based molecules as complex as those created by nature itself," it said.
The academy also described palladium-catalyzed cross coupling as a "precise and efficient tool," saying it is used in research worldwide as well as in the commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used in the electronics industry.
Negishi was born in China and joined Teijin Ltd. after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1958. He received a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963.
A native of Hokkaido, Suzuki received a doctorate from Hokkaido University and has engaged in research at Purdue University for about two years.
Heck, a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, was born in Massachusetts in 1931 and received a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1954.
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