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Bernard Lucas Feringa

Nobel Prize Winner gives a Lecture at the Congress of Chemists

10. 9. 2019 | 1298 visits

Bernard Lucas Feringa of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and holder of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2016 was received at the High Tatras. He gave the main lecture at the 71st Congress of Slovak and Czech Chemists in Starý Smokovec, where he was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Slovak Chemical Society, which operates at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

“The Gold Medal of the Slovak Chemical Society is the highest award of our Society. We appreciate his contribution to chemistry, to the development of this scientific discipline, but also because he did something for Slovakia. He led several of our students, postdoctoral students, the lives of whom he influenced by giving them a very good start. Unfortunately, few of them returned to Slovakia,” said Ing. Mária Omastová, DrSc., from the SAS Institute of Polymers, who is also a member of the Presidium of the Slovak Chemical Society. She views the professor as a very friendly, direct person and it is an experience to be in his company.

"I greatly appreciate this award from the Slovak Chemical Society, which is serving the chemical community very well and it means a lot to me that I could give a speech," said Feringa, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for design and synthesis of molecular machines. His dream and at the same time motivation is to create so-called. smart medicines that have a specific function and get activated, for example, in the form of light when we need them. Feringa confirmed that the public often does not perceive chemists and scientists in a serious way. However, he takes important inspiration in his research for example from nature, where things move due to molecular interaction. “We weren’t able to do that before because chemistry was static. Our team is currently trying to design it by human activity at the molecular level. We are still at the very beginning, but we can already move molecules and it is certainly the beginning of other discoveries,” Feringa pointed out.

Ben Feringa specializes in molecular nanotechnology. In 2016 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry alongside Jean-Pierre Sauvag from France and Fraser Stoddart from Britain. They commended their work in the design of the structure and synthesis of controlled-motion molecules, which can perform certain tasks when they are supplied with energy and for the development of so-called. molecular machines.

Monika Hucáková, TASR

Photo: Martin Bystriansky