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The Nobel Prize for Chemistry Went to the World's Smallest Machines

Nanomachines today are what electric motors were in the 1800s.
Colloidal nanoparticle. Image: Wikimedia

The creators of the world's tiniest machines have received the world's greatest recognition, having been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

The molecular machines are a thousand times thinner than a strand of hair, as BBC reports. Their small size allows for easy insertion into the human body to administer drugs, directly target cancer cells, or contribute to the functioning of "smart" technologies.

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The 8 million Swedish kronor, or $930,000, prize will be shared among the machine's designers, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard Feringa.

Sauvage, who is emeritus professor at the University of Strasbourg and director of research emeritus at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), has studied the relationship between sunlight and chemical reactions, which helped him understand how to link molecules in a chain.

Stoddart, affiliated with Northwestern University, had threaded a molecular ring onto a microscopic rod, acting as an axle, and then added to heat to make it go backwards and forwards. The discovery was the foundation of his group building various molecular machines.

Feringa, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, began research into molecular motors in 1999, and eventually built a four-wheel-drive nano-car in 2011. "I feel a little bit like the Wright Brothers who were flying 100 years ago for the first time and people were saying why do we need a flying machine and now we have a Boeing 747 and an Airbus," Feringa said of the Nobel prize in the BBC interview.

"In terms of development, the molecular motor is at the same stage as the electric motor was in the 1830s, when scientists displayed various spinning cranks and wheels, unaware that they would lead to electric trains, washing machines, fans, and food processors," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences told The New York Times as they announced the Nobel prize.

The academy awarded the prize to these three scientists because they were the frontrunners in the second wave of nanotechnology, which had been initially pioneered by physicist Richard Feynman beginning in the 1950s.

The implications of nanotechnology for medicine and smart materials are only just beginning to be understood, but as stated already, this is only the commencement of something that could become a fundamental technology in decades to come.

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