Heck, Richard F.

Richard F. Heck, in full Richard Fred Heck, (born August 15, 1931, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 9, 2015, Manila, Philippines), American chemist who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in using palladium as a catalyst in producing organic molecules. He shared the prize with Japanese chemists Negishi Ei-ichi and Suzuki Akira.

Heck received a bachelor’s degree (1952) and a doctoral degree (1954) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1954 to 1957 he did postdoctoral work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and at UCLA. In 1956 he joined the American chemical company Hercules Powder in Wilmington, Delaware.

In 1968 Heck used palladium as a catalyst in the synthesis of organic molecules. A carbon atom in an organic molecule binds to a palladium atom. When a carbon atom from another organic molecule binds to the palladium atom, the carbon atoms then bind to each other, ejecting the palladium and forming a new molecule. This reaction became known as the Heck reaction (or the Mizoroki-Heck reaction after Japanese chemist Mizoroki Tsutomu, who developed a more practical version of Heck’s original reaction). The technique of palladium catalysis found extensive use in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, and electronics industries.

In 1971 Heck became a professor of chemistry at the University of Delaware in Newark. He retired in 1989.