Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Official Interview

well richard heck aichi nigishi akira suzuki and welcome to stockholm and to nobel week thank you you um professors negishi and suzuki you've just arrived from japan where you were together being fated do you enjoy all the attention that this brings well i think uh maybe i want to enjoy it how about you well i feel that it's part of part of the prize and [Music] probably the best thing is for me to enjoy it and then provide hopefully my best service too that's true i suppose you can't escape it that's right might as well enjoy yes how about you professor heck you were in the philippines so maybe that was a little quieter already retired yes yes nobody found me there wonderful quiet you already i suppose must be used to some fame anyway because the ne the reactions uh for which you have been awarded the nobel prize are named after you there's the heck reaction and the nigishi reaction of the suzuki reaction so your household words in any chemistry laboratory only in the chemical world yes but within the chemical world very important words i mean there's so much of carbon-carbon chemistry is done using these reactions it's a nice part of chemistry that organic organic chemistry that the reactions are named after their inventors so all these characters live on through the pages of the organic synthesis textbooks um do you know where that convention came from that reactions should be named after the people who made them no i don't um there are some several books based on on so-called name reactions and i had an occasion to go through some of them and after the world war ii there have been just about 100 names given to 100 reactions so that means maybe a two a year so it's getting much rarer i'm not sure so i i suppose we we are three lucky ones [Laughter] of course before the second world war some of the small number of the name reaction we already had the for example this other reaction there such kind of reaction is a very long historical bakudan but as he just told you after the second world war i don't know why because one reason should be many reactions discovered by many open chemists that should be one reason and the one another reason is name reaction is very convenient for example on my case there if i tell you exactly in the you know chemical wells that is a cross-coupling reaction of organoboron compounds with organic electrophiles so that is so long word but suzuki reaction is very including all of such a thing so i think uh president because you know i just uh talking about when the ibis when i met the president this is herbert brown yeah how about she brown she recommended me to like my so-called look reaction so i agree i started to write such a book and finally i named the book the cross coupling reaction of organ boron compound press brown said no this is not a nice word nicer name suzuki reaction is the very simple and very convenient but i against his proposal because i'm one of very small shy japanese chemists you know so i don't like such a big you know name react i never want to join the name say name reaction but brown said no no it's okay but at this moment i completely the uh the thanks plus abram because he give me that i just we decided i published my book the title of the book is the suzuki reaction that is very now i'm very the science plan because it's very uh convenient to collect the all of such you know research from the journals suzuki reaction or the coupling reaction everything's the item collects such a the chemistry and inside meaning is convenient it's a it's a nice way to be made immortal to have a reaction named after you i think so if we turn to the cross-coupling reaction that we've just been discussing it began with you uh professor heck in um working at hercules company i think yes and you were exploring palladium's ability to do interesting things you weren't actually looking for a cross-coupling reaction no it wasn't no it just happened and i recognized it and thought this would be something useful so that's why i studied it when you publish papers on this you publish them as a single author so we which implies you were working very much alone was that the case well i had a non-technical assistant but i only had put my name on it so were you left free to play in this in this uh industrial environment you could just i was in their basic research group which is a small group that could try anything i guess if they thought it might be useful and they left us alone pretty much at least for a while and you were you aware that palladium would act as a catalyst to bring carbon atoms together in this way well there were some things in the literature that suggested it might be a useful reagent for doing that kind of chemistry yes it was there were so early people in this field who did some good chemistry like coats remember coats and calvin i remember that paper which was one very early but they nobody ever seemed to follow it up was was your company keem to to make money out of your research well that was what i was supposed to do i don't think i did much for them but that's one of the reasons i'm not there anymore but they met you weren't patenting the method or anything like that well they patented everything that they thought could possibly conceivably be useful so some of it was patented i think but it didn't stop everybody just taking it up so no they didn't seem to care whether they did it or not and the beauty of the beauty of the of the heck coupling reaction is that it's it's a relatively mild way of putting carbon atoms together and therefore is hugely applicable because you can have you can leave all sorts of side groups intact while doing it yeah see the functional groups alone here and it's uptake now these reactions are everywhere but the uptake wasn't immediate it's usual isn't it yeah i guess i i i but when do you think its power was seen oh i couldn't put a date on it i i i it's a slow process it just happened slowly you have to make a decision on where you're going to say it started i don't know it's hard to say and then professor negishi you replaced the olefin part the double the carbon carbon double bonded part of the reaction with an organozinc compound and this extended the applicability of the reaction i guess i represent a rebellious group [Laughter] so basically what we have done is took a cue from his reaction replace the hydrogen ch with the cm cm so this is this many people now now they say you went backward [Laughter] because hydrogen is a more agreeable element generally considered to be more agreeable ailment than metal they made it more toxic yeah yeah potentially but some of us including myself say well this is a characteristic of sort of a next generation group including professor suzuki's suzuki coupling if i may say so it's a tag m is a tag to organic molecule so here you shall react here or here or here we can specify system trans here or here cis or trans and such and uh it will also act as a major promoter uh you know with having m rather than h eventually i think we would want to go back to hydrogen again but at the moment we claim that by replacing original hydrogen with metal now the rest can be virtually anything [Music] and then with a tag and a speeding up the reaction from around 100 degrees down to room temperature or below and then retaining the all sorts of integrity of that group we can we can specify cis by putting m in the cis position or we can specify trans by placing uh m in a transposition so that's so that's a repair but it's very it's very interesting to hear this reaction talked about as a work in progress that that there is a current situation where you're dealing with cm there is an eventual position where perhaps you can go back to ch because when when i think they're talked about normally it's as if they are things that have been given to the community and this is the hate reaction this is the negotiation this is a suzuki reaction and they are to be used and one doesn't think about their further development but of course they are they they are developments of each other and there is a there is a continuation yeah i think that's our ambition and our eventual goal is to be able to hook together any any or two any two organic groups and we believe that are you know we have uh covered uh a little more than halfway through towards this goal but in each case as i said eventually it would be very nice to replace metal with hydrogen but to what extent we can do is our remaining question but before that we want to be able to cover all types of organics and all combinations probably we have to take care of about 100 different combinations and i believe we we have reached just about a halfway point i want to pick up on this halfway point because there is a there's this marvelous abundance of molecules out in nature that we look at and try to emulate and sometimes build and sometimes sometimes try to improve upon and then there are textbooks full of reaction schemes which allow one to think about how to put things together to make them and you're saying that we're about in as an estimation halfway towards the goal of filling those textbooks to the absolute limit how does one estimate how many reactions there are to be discovered means well not necessarily in uh in sort of a volume of uh or you know the things that we we cover typically organic compounds you know we can we can consider in terms of 10 or so dozen different kinds of functional groups alkyl our kidney olefin acetylene aromatics acl etc etc about 10 of those if you take a look at organic chemistry textbooks then you see you see their discussion discussions of them in 1000 to 20 chapters so that's organic so if you if you consider 10 or so as r1 group and then similar 10 or so as r2 group then you have a 10 times 10 100 combination if you can hook them at will as you wish then that's the whole essentially you practically the whole organic framework construction you understand yes i do yes okay so forget about the other functional details but uh in this in in our approach functional groups can be there can be placed as needed and then when time for coupling the two together we do it's a lovely it makes organic chemistry sound so lovely and approachable it's a ten by ten matrix and that's it if you if you can fill all the boxes yeah i call it i i call this a lego game yeah okay yeah it's just fitting like two two lego game pieces yes then you hook them and their critical one is a palladium okay so that acts as the catalyst that is the thing that brings the lego pieces together to touch them together so that's that's the main difference between what we do and what uh grignard did 100 years ago when he won the nobel prize the first nobel prize in organometallic chemistry he didn't have a catalyst okay so he didn't have the catalyst but his his is probably still considered to be one of the most versatile methods in organic synthesis and uh i tend to feel that ours might supersede might go beyond and that's because of the power of the transition metals yes to to catalyze so tell me about the power of the transition metals here we're dealing with one palladium yes but there are you know according to my opinion i have a little bit different thinking about chemistry you know this time i don't know i get that we get the nobel prize by using the cross coupling reaction using separation catalyst but according to my opinion persimmon is not only one important transgender catalyst because polymer they are of course and many people know pyjama is a very nice catas but unfortunately that is very expensive so nobody wants especially in the company they don't want to use such expensive patterns for become out so recently for example in our reaction using honorable compound of course we uh when we started our chemistry we first used the parsing catalyst but not only the paradigm we also use the nickel compound and the other kind of the transmitter compound but at that time we found persim give us the best result it can give us the some result but sometimes they had the mixture of the product selectivities that means the selectivity is now good so i decided to student we stopped to study the other transition metal catalyst except the problem we started we only start the checks uh reaction by using positive compound but after that after my determinant many people use the evening positive cutters in our coupling reaction not always give us this result because when we use a positive compound for example the coupling reaction of aromatic chloride with aromatic boring acid is very difficult when we use a vitamin compound but recently the people reported when we use nickel compounds as a catalyst instead of virgin compounds even the aromatic chloride reacts with the aromatic covalent acid to give different type of compounds that is one of uh big advantages so so as well as varying the substitu the the substituents that go into the reaction one can also vary the the transition metal catalyst and then that just opens up a whole new spectrum of possibilities the the the idea that we can solve all these problems of how to link the different functional groups together suggest that there might be an end to the development of organic chemistry that organic chemi that synthetic methodology could reach a point at which you say right it is we have what we need and then it's just building what we need do we really foresee such a time in a very very long time long time but uh this is only one mode of organic synthesis very very general very important more but uh i have been recently telling people organic synthetic chemists have a major major task right now which we want to solve that is how to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates which nature does in a biochemical way biological way but no you know no synthetic chemist has yet to you know have yet to claim this laboratory way or factory way of doing the same thing i say i think this is a very very important task because if we can do that economically which we should be able to do then we will solve a food problem energy problem and the pollution problem because the co2 is starting material we need more rather than less and i say this i cite this one because i believe family believe as in the nature as in nature d-block transition metals in the case of biological process it's iron iron is a d-block transition metal is going to be critically essent you know needed and probably one electron transfer process radical kind of chemistry rather than nice are nice two electron transfer processes like a heck reaction or reaction so those are two electron transfer process reactions so you would promote the uh you would promote the study of and research on the d block transition metals as our as a major area well i'm just presenting this as an example of a major goal right in front of us we want to solve this today or maybe in years time or 10 years time you know and no one right now we have a feeling that we should be able to do that because nature doesn't nature has been doing that for billions of years it's a big shame for for the entire group including ourselves and nate well yes okay so what i'm saying is that uh this is just one one of the major pending goals you talked about our tasks being reduce down eventually to zero i don't think that time will come pretty soon when you approach when you moved into organic chemistry as a young man was it the desire to solve problems such as how to convert co2 that or other things that drove you there or was it just a general inquisitiveness were you applied or just curious i enjoyed working with chemicals i could do things and make all kinds of perfumes and things interested me in the first few years of my studies and i expanded on that and the useful to make all kinds of uh materials that you might want to use technical uh materials for example were you a childhood chemist yes that was in my teenage early teenage years i started chemistry a lot of children make bones when they're yeah i i well i guess i did do a little of that but not much yeah so that was my start what about you professor suzuki what what led you to chemistry when you were young well i think i know recently i don't know here in sweden in japan the people says young japanese poland girls they never feel so much interest in the science including the chemistry defeats and so on but so this time after i get the nobel prize yeah decided i received the nobel prize so i had a main chance to talk with press people they said the recent in japan the young people they don't like science and technology but i think in japan of course as you know in japan we don't have any enough resources we don't have any petroleum we don't have any iron resources we only had a coal mining resources but that is uh located so deep place under the the land so it takes a lot of money to cut from down to up so in such a meaning in japan important thing is we make very nice product then we sell such products all over the world that is the only way japan people we continue our country in such a meaning the we have to say the young people you have to they explain our situation and one way we can continue our japan is to feel very much interested in science and technology to make a very nice product to sell such a thing to the bar so in such a meaning i say the japanese government and the invasive pressure they we said such thing to the young people and he joined us to with very much interest in our chemistry not only the chemistry the the science and the physics but in such a meaning i always said the other chance to talk with prime minister of japan after i get the uh the sadie's uh i received the nobel prize so i emphasize that you sing to the our prime minister he uh he's also scientist he's the the physics that his major so he understand very well but unfortunately many of the you know such people in jail government didn't understand any much more about science and technology so i think the under first thing important in our government is to understand such a real situation and to give a lot of research money of course at this moment japanese yeah our economical situation is very not so nice even though the i asked the prime minister that our government understands our social situation to support the science and the technology and to give research money for such a field and also the the you know the reasonable money to the education that is very important i just say such as you know government people yeah decently yeah well it's obviously undoubtedly good for society that scientists the young people move into science normally normally normally such such aims are not the thing that drives people into science you realize that later but as a young person you're just probably following a curiosity yes yeah i don't know but uh anyway that is i just explained the japanese situation yes but what are the situation in the air here in sweden or here in the england were here in united states is the same thing no i i so many different people and groups i i be hard to just get one single view of things i think i think it has very many different approaches but my friend the american says that the young people they like very much to become the medical doctor and the lawyer that is just connected with some money you know that is a very serious problem i think you know we have to empathize that we have to the gives our knowledge to young people money is not the only one thing we have to consider so but anyway that's a good message i don't suppose it was money that drove you to chemistry originally what was it that made you adopt chemistry as your subject well as a as an elementary school kid i like math very crisp then i thought i was going to measure doubly electrical engineering fascinating electronics then i switched to chemistry perhaps for for a little bit for money because someone told me in a electronic or electrical industry pay is not so good so my my motivation was very impure but looking back i think that i i chose the right right field for me because it's not so mathematical you know i mean it's not like mass it's not cut and dry and yet i didn't develop my liking tools by biologically oriented you know areas because there were so many unknowns and so many nebulous kinds of things and many things were served in between [Music] so they didn't appeal to me and now chemistry you know is sort of in between between two extremes and i love that you know and i think that this is an area where we can exercise our imagination and we can have many useful discoveries and then a development and then overall impact is uh you know that works for the benefit of mankind and uh so looking back i i am very glad that i chose chemistry and i am recommending this to many young people by saying that sort of feet on the ground and head in the air exactly yeah do you find that young people are coming to chemistry to a sufficient degree in the states you i mean you you've been teaching at purdue for many years do you find that so from our perspective uh probably we we're finding fewer and fewer younger people to be sufficiently qualified to be trained by us at the graduate level that's what i'm mainly interested in and that that's been my one of my concerns so it's not they're no longer seeing it as a better paid alternative why do you think they're not coming well as you said probably they are gravitating towards the areas that obviously look more lucrative one of my grand grandchildren he is measuring business not chemistry not science maybe for that reason i think you you use the phrase that um shortly after the award of the nobel prize that you you see the development of the work you've been doing in organometallic chemistry as searching for the truth and i mean that has to be an extremely appealing concept for any young person but maybe chemistry is sold wrong maybe people coming into it don't see it that way probably not it takes it takes some experience and an experience of discovering something new or in a sort of a rigorous rigorously scientific way you make some developments these kinds of experiences will further excite you you know to to pro you know to prepare you to pursue along that line and those are very very exciting experiences even today i suppose it's you have to get the rigor before you get the joy of the discovery and that seems that way yeah and uh in my case perhaps in professor suzuki's case we learned a lot of these kinds of things how to maneuver through failures and difficulties and eventually to come up with uh with a success from our common mentor yes well let's let's return to herbert brown professor brown what was it that he taught you i think he gave us many things that one thing i still i knew about she said that is you have to study you are your research results should be on the textbook textbook you know in textbooks yeah so that means you have to find your chemistry just the you know new field of the chemistry so if the such a new chemistry should be there appears on the textbook so he always says you have to do your study which appears on the textbook and also i also that i often said the saying is a little bit different but i always say the student you have to do the basic you know in japan we had a special box in the box we put the lights that we have how do you say in japan the english that is that is the kind of the livestock or something like that right yeah okay so i say this student you never do the u.s study just just inside of the box just pick up some lice or something like that no that is not our research purpose our research purposes even your last box is small you have to make you know the new lice box that means you have to define some new research results nobody saw try such a fail that is that is the meaning of the almost same meaning pressure brown told me asked and i told my student i saw i always emphasized the student we have to find the new research phrase in our study people are very keen these days in saying that you should think outside of the box but this is much nicer because you don't just think outside the box you have to create a new box it is it includes the discipline one requires not just the kind of wildness of it yes yes that is my blood and in such a meaning we had the same you know feeling it's very nice i think there he said he before he she was young he liked mathematics fast but my sister almost same when i was a high school boy i feel very much interested in mathematics so when i get in the university okay university first i want to study the chemistry in the department mathematics of the school of science but at that time when i learned the orange chemistry our pleasure the techies book we use the textbook of organ chemistry written by president frieza he used to be a press of harvard in boston united states that is very very interesting so my i changed my major from mathematics to organic chemistry all intensity of course one the division of chemistry but the organic chemist is so far from the mathematics you know physical chemistry is just near the the uh you know physics and mathematics when it came so far i changed so much their my intention herbert brown was obviously an enormous influence on you as well professor negishi is there is there something in particular that you remember about him that that um encapsulates his approach well there are many but i think he's a master of how to handle difficulties or failures and turn them into success and i believe we all learn how to deal with those hard situations and he had many many so usually he has many plans i suppose failure is really more frequent than success in seems that way but uh in his group the ratio of success to failure gets very high and i eventually come come up with i came up with uh my own saying to you know for my group group members i say research is something in which we link success with success with success with success in other words when we fail do it in brown's way and minimize a time of failure or difficulties and turn that or switch to success and i think we need to have this kind of intense attitude you know in maximizing the success to failure ratio as brown did and because we we have the same amount of time every every day every year in our life prop pretty much the same yes yes i benefited i have benefited greatly from that from that sort of attitude and of that approach thank you and lastly richard heck did you but working alone maybe you didn't have a mentor or was there somebody well i worked with winstein first where i got my degree and he taught me physical organic chemistry and i didn't follow that up i got into more organometallic chemistry as i went into industry so in industry i i tried to make money for the company mostly so they were directing my work more or less and then when you were teaching at the university of delaware what did you try and impress upon the students was there one message summed up yours well i guess what what they came away with it's a difficult subject and you've got to study hard if you want to do well in chemistry that seems like a good admonition to end the interview on right thank you very much indeed all of you for speaking to us and i wish you the most pleasant of nobel weeks thank you thank you very much thank you thank you very much indeed

Channel: Nobel Prize

Views: 6,685

Keywords:

Id: oN2--Aid_wA

Length: 40min 36sec (2436 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021