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Richard F. Heck
2
Richard F. Heck
Kylie McCoy
Family Upbringing
When Heck was a teenager, his parents moved to the suburbs of Los Angeles, settling in a house with a barren lot.
The Barren Lot
While planting orchids there, Heck would often think about the chemicals in the fertilizer, a fascination that prompted him to study chemistry in school.
Educational Background
Educational Background
Bachelor's Degree
B.S
Heck received a B.S. degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1952.
Ph.D
Heck earned his Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry in 1954 at the University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D
Heck did graduate research with Saul Winstein in the area of neighboring-group participation in the solvolysis of arylsulfonates.
Research
Work and Contributions
Heck worked at the Hercules corporation in Wilmington, Delaware in 1957.
Hercules corporation and University of Delawar
After productive research work at Hercules, Heck was hired by the University of Delawar’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1971.
Heck was a professor of chemistry at the University of Delaware.
Heck retired from University of Delaware in 1989.
After receiving his Ph.D., Heck studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, with Vladimir Prelog
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
There, he carried out research on the solvolysis of medium-sized cycloalkyl arylsulfonates. He then returned to UCLA and Winstein's group to do more research on neighboring-group effects
In 2004, the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware established the Richard F. Heck Lectureship in his honor, and he presented the Inaugural lecture.
Inaugural lecture
2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his role in developing a chemical process for organic synthesis which is now widely used for a rang of purposes, including the fields of medicine and electronics.
Nobel Prize
Japanese scientists Purdue University’s Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki, separately made outstanding contributions in organic chemistry, a field whose basis is carbon, one of the essential elements of life and also of innumerable industrial synthetics.
Negishi and Suzuki
Ei-ichi Negishi
Akira Suzuki
Their work provided “one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today (and) vastly improved the possibilities for chemists to create sophisticated chemicals,” the Nobel committee said
The three scientists
The three scientist shared the prize of $1.49 million for their work on the Nobel Prize
Prize Money
Heck met his wife, Socorro, in 1979
Personal Life
He was visiting Manila as a tourist when he met her in her mother’s canteen at the Malacañang compound, where she was working as her mother’s assistant.
Marriage
Heck and Socorro married in 1979, just after one month of dating.
They never had any children.
Life experience until his death
Life experience
Heck and his wife, Socorro Nardo-Heck, moved to the Philippines when he retired. The Philippines is where Socorro was born and raised.
News of the Nobel Prize
He got the news that he had won the Nobel Prize while he was enjoying his retirement in the Philippines.
When asked if he had any plans to celebrate, he responded, “I’m just going to enjoy the feeling of having won…no plans for big celebrations.”
Plans for the Prize
Heck stated, “ I don’t think this is going to change my life. I’m too old.”
Sources
• https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/science/richard-f-heck-chemist-who-revolutionized-drug-development-dies-at-84.html?ribbon-ad-idx=12&rref=science
• https://www.webcitation.org/5z192K7jM?url=http://pubs.acs.org/email/cen/html/020906105850.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20101010031541/http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20101008-296591/Hes-the-only-Nobel-winner-living-in-RP
• http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/202862/us-scientist-residing-in-philippines-wins-2010-chemistry-nobel/story/