International Trio Share Nobel for Chemistry

An American and two Japanese scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their discovery of a new way to bond carbon atoms together.

Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki were honored for their development in the 1960s and '70s of one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today, called palladium-catalyzed cross coupling.

Their method lets chemists join carbon atoms together, and is now used worldwide in commercial production of pharmaceuticals, including potential cancer drugs, and molecules used in the electronics industry.