Trio behind the world’s tiniest machines wins Nobel Prize for chemistry

A trio of European scientists has won the 2016 Nobel Prize for chemistry for developing tiny machines that could one day be injected to fight cancer. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Scotland’s Sir Fraser Stoddart and Dutchman Bernard Feringa developed molecules with controllable movements. Their discovery has many potential uses, including being used to deliver drugs to treat tumours or acting as artificial muscles to power tiny robots. Goran Hansson, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences which conferred the award, said it was “all about the world’s tiniest machines”. Asked about where they could lead, he responded: “The sky’s the limit.”

Think of a tiny micro-robot that a doctor in the future will inject into your blood and that goes to search for a cancer cell or goes to deliver a drug, for instance

Prof Bernard Feringa

The three laureates will share the eight million Swedish kronor ($933,000 or 832,000 euros) prize equally. Prof Feringa, 65, said the prize-winning research offered great opportunities for the future. “I feel a little bit like the Wright brothers, who were flying 100 years ago for the first time. And then people were saying, ‘why do we need flying machines?’ And now we’ve got the Boeing 747 and the Airbus,” he said. Prof Stoddart, who was born in Edinburgh and grew up on a farm with no electricity, is now professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. The 74-year-old said the prize was unexpected but added: “When it happens, it takes your breath away.”

It’s just really lovely, it’s fundamental chemistry; it’s synthesis in making these machines. … What it could make in years to come is very exciting

Prof Stoddart’s daughter Alison

Science