Molecular machine designers win 2016 Nobel in Chemistry

PARIS (AA)- The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for developing the world's smallest machines, the Nobel Academy announced Wednesday.

Jean Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard Feringa will share the award "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines".

The trio – a Scot, Dutchman, and Frenchman – have demonstrated “how the miniaturization of technology can lead to a revolution” and “taken chemistry to a new dimension,” said the Nobel Committee in a press release.

“2016's Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have taken molecular systems out of equilibrium's stalemate and into energy-filled states in which their movements can be controlled.”

The committee added, “Molecular machines will most likely be used in the development of things such as new materials, sensors and energy storage systems.”

Stoddart works at Northwestern University in the United States. Sauvage is based at the University of Strasbourg and Feringa at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

“It’s not just a scientific family, it’s almost a biological family; we’re very close to each other,” Stoddart said in a telephone interview with the Nobel Foundation soon after being named a co-winner.

The award, which was established by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895, comes with a prize worth 8 million Swedish krona ($937,000). It will be shared equally between the Laureates.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 was awarded jointly to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Turkish-born Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.