Richard Heck, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on palladium, is to be honoured by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) with the Glenn T Seaborg Medal.

The prize is awarded every year to a UCLA alumnus who makes significant contributions to chemistry and biochemistry.

Seaborg won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1951, with the medal established in his name in 1987.

Heck, currently the Willis F Harrington professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware, is one of six UCLA alumni to win a Nobel Prize.

He won the Nobel Prize for developing techniques to synthesize complex carbon molecules that have had an huge effect on the manufacture of medicines and industrial products.

Heck discovered new chemical reactions that used the metal palladium as a catalyst.

Albert Courey, professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, explained that the "Heck reaction" is used in "the synthesis of a wide variety of medically and commercially important compounds, including anti-cancer drugs such as taxol and analgesics such as morphine".

He added: "This reaction is also extremely important in biological research since, for example, the techniques used to sequence the human genome depend on it."

Heck will pick up the Glenn T Seaborg Medal at a ceremony on Saturday (November 5th).

Source:

Nobel laureate in chemistry and UCLA alum Richard Heck to be honored at UCLA Nov. 5 (01/11/11) 

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