A Frenchman and two American men have won the 2005 Nobel Chemistry prize for their work in organic chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced this morning.
Yves Chauvin, Robert Grubbs and Richard Schrock won the €1.07 million prize for work in the organic chemistry reaction, metathesis.
The reaction enables the creation of new molecules for use in pharmaceuticals and environmentally-friendly production of chemicals and plastics.
In its citation, the prize jury said the three had created fantastic opportunities for producing new molecules, and added that imagination will soon be the only limit to what kind of molecules can be built in future.
The Nobel prize winners for Medicine and Physics were announced earlier this week.
The Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced on Friday, while the economics prize will be announced next Monday. A date has not yet been set for the awarding of this year's Literature prize.
