Suzuki, Akira (1930-…), a Japanese chemist, shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in developing an efficient way to bond two carbon atoms together. Such bonds can be used to assemble large and complex organic (carbon-based) molecules. Suzuki shared the prize with the American chemist Richard Heck and the Japanese chemist Ei-ichi Negishi.
To produce many organic chemicals in a lab, chemists must bond two or more carbon atoms together. But such bonding can be difficult because carbon atoms are generally stable. Thus, they do not react readily with one another. In addition, large organic molecules may contain many carbon atoms. Getting two specific carbon atoms to bond can be a difficult and inefficient process.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Heck refined the use of the metal palladium as a catalyst in producing specific carbon-carbon bonds. A catalyst is a substance that increases the efficiency or speed of a chemical reaction. In the Heck reaction, palladium is mixed with two different organic molecules. A single palladium atom bonds with a specific carbon atom on each molecule. This short-lived bond brings the two carbon atoms close together. The two carbon atoms then release the palladium atom and bond to each other, connecting the molecules into one larger molecule. In a paper published in 1979, Suzuki revealed an improvement to the Heck reaction. His reaction linked a boron atom to one of the organic molecules. This addition enabled the reaction to be performed with greater efficiency and under milder conditions. This reaction became known as the Suzuki reaction. Negishi developed a similar improvement using zinc.
Suzuki was born on Sept. 12, 1930, in Mukawa, Japan, near Tomakomai. He received his Ph.D. degree from Hokkaido University in 1959. After working as a research assistant and an assistant professor at the university, he studied at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, from 1963 until 1965. He then returned to Hokkaido University. After reaching the school’s mandatory retirement age, he left the university as a full professor in 1994. Suzuki continued to teach chemistry at the Okayama University of Science in 1994 and 1995. He then moved on to the Kurashiki University of Science and Arts until his retirement from academics in 2002.
See also Heck, Richard Fred ; Negishi, Ei-ichi .
