Chemistry Nobel for Nanomachines

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EDUCATION Where Nobel winners start List reveals undergraduate schools with most laureates.

BY TOM CLYNES

new study ranks institutions by the GRONINGEN; R: VINCENT KESSLER/REUTERS L: RSC; M: UNIV. proportion of their undergraduates that Molecular architects: Fraser Stoddart, Bernard Feringa and Jean-Pierre Sauvage. go on to win Nobel prizes. ATwo schools dominate: École Normale Supé- NANOTECHNOLOGY rieure (ENS) in Paris and the California Insti- tute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. These small, elite institutions each admit fewer than 250 undergraduates per year, yet their per capita Chemistry Nobel production of Nobelists outstrips some larger world-class universities by factors of hundreds. “This is a way to identify colleges that have a history of producing major impact,” says for nanomachines Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and a co-author of the unpublished study. Award recognizes three pioneers of molecular motors. Wai and Stephen Hsu, a physicist at Michi- gan State University in East Lansing, examined BY RICHARD VAN NOORDEN & that could adapt or change depending on the 81 institutions worldwide that each had at DAVIDE CASTELVECCHI external signals. least three alumni who received a Nobel award “I applaud the fact that — for once in in any of the six categories between 1901 and hree chemists who created tiny chemistry — Stockholm has recognized a 2015. For a meaningful comparison, the team molecular machines have won the piece of chemistry that is fundamental in its divided the number of Nobel laureates at a 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for making and being,” Stoddart said at a press university by its estimated number of under- Ttheir intricate designs. conference at Northwestern University, held graduate alumni. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, at the University later in the day. Many of the top Nobel-producing institutions of Strasbourg in France; Fraser Stoddart, Only a handful of laboratories are are private, with significant financial resources. a Scottish-born chemist at Northwestern currently actively engaged in making Among the more surprising high performers University in Evanston, Illinois; and Bernard nanomachines, says Dean Astumian, who were several small US liberal-arts colleges, such Feringa, at the University of Groningen in the studies the theory of molecular motors at the as Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania (ranked Netherlands, share the award for their work University of Maine in Orono. But he thinks at number 4) and Amherst College in Massa- in the 1980s and 1990s, when they pioneered the field will get a boost from the award. “The chusetts (number 9). efforts to miniaturize motors. recognition that is afforded by a Nobel prize To gauge trends over time, Wai cut the sample “I’m a bit shocked because it was such is going to attract the best young people,” he of 870 laureates into 20-year bands. US univer- a great surprise. And I’m so honoured,” says. Astumian thinks the work will provide sities, which now make up almost half of the said Feringa in a telephone interview with applications within 25 years. “There’s no top 50 list, began to dominate after the Second the Nobel Committee just after the prize- device that you can buy that’s made out of World War. Whereas French representation in winners were announced in Stockholm on molecular machines. But they’re coming.” the Nobel ranks has declined over time, top- 5 October. ranked ENS has remained steady in its output. The three have made molecular knots, MOLECULAR ARCHITECTS Santo Fortunato, a theoretical physicist at shuttles, rotors, chains, pumps, axles, In 1983, Sauvage’s group was the first to create Indiana University Bloomington who has switches, memory devices and even a molecular interlocking chains and rings — researched trends in Nobel prizewinners, cau- nanocar — all at the scale of molecules (see called catenanes — which were the first steps tions that the methodology cannot produce a ‘Nanomachines’). The nanoscale machines to creating the connected parts needed for highly accurate or predictive ranking. “There is are yet to find application, but researchers molecular motors. By creating interlocking a high margin of error due to the low numbers hope that their uses could range from deliv- rings, Stoddart noted at his press conference, of prominent scholars,” he says. ering drugs to computer memory. Sauvage’s group effectively invented a new Wai and Hsu agree that there are statistical “It’s early days, of course,” Feringa told the way to bind molecules together — a mechani- uncertainties in their rankings, owing to the Nobel Committee. “But once you are able to cal bond, rather than a chemical one. “New small number of prizes awarded each year. The control movement, you have a motor, you bonds are few and far between. They are really two are confident that the ENS and Caltech lead can think of all kinds of functions.” He sug- the blue moons,” Stoddart said. the pack, but say that statistical fluctuations gested that the machines could be used as Stoddart himself, in 1991, created the first could change the order of institutions placed tiny robots in the body to deliver drugs or molecular shuttle: a ring-shaped molecule from third to ninth, Hsu says. ■ detect cancerous cells; or as smart materials threaded onto an ‘axle’, called a rotaxane. The

CORRECTION The News story ‘Where Nobel winners start’ (Nature 538, 152; 2016) wrongly said that the study assessed only four categories of the Nobel awards, in fact it looked at all six.