US, Japan and Switzerland Share Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, October 10, 2002

US, Japan and Switzerland Share Nobel Prize in Chemistry

John Fenn of the United States, Koichi Tanaka of Japan and Kurt Wuthrich of Switzerland won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday.

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John Fenn of the United States, Koichi Tanaka of Japan and Kurt Wuthrich of Switzerland won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday.

The three chemists were cited for "the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules," the academy said in a statement.

Fenn and Tanaka share half of the prize worth 10 million Swedish kronor (1.07 million US dollars) for having "developed methods that make it possible to analyze biological macromolecules," it said.

Fenn, 85, is a research professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and Tanaka, 43, an engineer at Japan's Shimadzu Corp in Kyoto. Tanaka is the second Japanese to be named as a Nobel laureate this week.

Wuthrich gains the other half of the prize for his further development of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) that gives information on the three-dimensional structure and dynamics of the molecules, the academy said.

Wuthrich, 64, is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a visiting professor at the Scripps Research Institute in the United States.

Praising the analytical methods for biomolecules developed by the trio as "revolutionary," the academy said researchers can now use them to "rapidly and simply reveal what different proteins a sample contains."

With the methods, researchers can also determine three-dimensional pictures showing waht protein molecules look like in solution and can then understand their function in cell.

"The methods have revolutionized the development of new pharmaceuticals," the academy said. "Promising applications are also being reported in other areas, for example foodstuff control and early diagnosis of breast cancer and prostate cancer."

Last year, the chemistry award went to Royji Noyori of Japan and K. Barry Sharpless and William S. Knowles of the United States for the development of catalytic asymmetric synthesis.

The academy will also announce later Wednesday the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences, which was created by the bank in 1968 in memory of Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prize's founder. The prize in economics is not one of the five original prizes established in Nobel's will.

On Monday, it named Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston of Britain and H. Robert Horvitz of the United States as the winners of this year's prize in medicine or physiology for their research into genes.

On Tuesday, it gave the physics prize to Masatoshi Koshiba of Japan and Riccardo Giacconi and Raymond Davis Jr., both of the United States, for their pioneering contributions to astrophysics.

The Swedish Academy on Tuesday set Thursday the date to make the coveted award for literature. The peace prize will be made known on Friday in Oslo, the capital of Norway.

The prize award ceremonies are always held in the Swedish capital on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Nobel.

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