Photo credit: Richard Broekhuijzen — Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ben Feringa
born 1951 · Netherlands · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2016
Built the first light-driven molecular motor and shared the 2016 prize for the design of molecular machines.
Nobel Prize work
For the design and synthesis of molecular machines. Feringa created the first light-driven unidirectional rotary molecular motor (1999): a chiral overcrowded alkene in which photoisomerization followed by thermal helix inversion forces continuous rotation in one direction. His group later drove a four-wheeled "nanocar" across a copper surface and built molecular muscles and shuttles, key steps toward nanoscale machinery.