Molecular Machines – 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Biological systems, have a variety of nano-sized molecular machines which serve a variety of purposes. Motivated by such nanosized machines, chemists have synthesized artificial machines, which are even smaller –the molecular machines. This year’s Nobel prize has been awarded to three pioneers of this field, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa. The talk will outline their contributions, which lead to the award. Also, it will very briefly describe the biological molecular motors, illustrating how beautiful and efficient they are, and end by pointing out how much more work is required to have synthetic motors of even a fraction of their efficiency.