Bernard Lucas " Ben" Feringa (; born 18 May 1951) is a Dutch synthetic organic chemist, specializing in molecular nanotechnology and homogeneous catalysis.
He is the Jacobus van 't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences, at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and an Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Fraser Stoddart and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines".
Ben Feringa holds over 30 and has published over 650 Academic paper to date, cited more than 30,000 times and has an h-index in excess of 90. He has guided over 100 PhD students over his career.
Applications of molecular switches developed in his group include responsive materials and Surface science, , electrochromic devices for , photo-switchable DNA as a molecular memory stick, responsive , , and light-switchable for nanoscale drug delivery systems, anion sensor, responsive and photopharmacology as well as entirely novel approaches using responsive drugs toward , antibiotic treatment and antibiotic resistance, and biofilm formation. Interfacing with the macroscopic world by surface assembly on gold nanoparticles and a macroscopic gold film, has shown that the motor functions while chemically bound to a surface, a key result for future nanomachines such as a molecular conveyor belt. Experiments that involve doping liquid crystals with molecular motors demonstrate that the motion of the motor can be harnessed to make macroscopic objects rotate on a liquid crystal film and drive molecular systems out-of-equilibrium. Several of these discoveries were selected for the list of most important chemical discoveries of the year by Chemical & Engineering News.
In 2011, molecular ‘nanocar’, a molecule that contains molecular motor-based wheels and was shown to move on a solid surface upon subjection to electric current from an STM tip, was highlighted in international daily newspapers & magazines worldwide and selected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as one of the 10 major discoveries in sciences worldwide. Towards the future discipline of Systems chemistry, the development of a multistage chiral catalysts which comprises an integrated supramolecular system that brings together molecular recognition, chirality transfer, catalysis, stereoelectronic control and enantio-selectivity while all these processes can be enabled or disabled via an internal motor function, moves the design and application of molecular motors to a whole new level of sophistication.
Aside from molecular motors and switches, Feringa's work has crossed many disciplines and includes the use of phosphoramidites as ligands in asymmetric catalysis, an excellent stereocontrol was archived in copper-catalysed C–C bond formation, which led to a breakthrough in catalytic asymmetric conjugate addition. As phosphoramidites found use in industry, recently they utilised them as starting reagents for asymmetric C-P bond formation. Traditionally, an external chiral ligand is used for chiral induction in a C–P coupling reaction, but the competitive coordination of initial and final phosphorus compounds with the metal catalysts, together with an external chiral ligand, reduces the enantioselectivity. As BINOL-containing phosphoramidites have the properties of an intrinsic chiral ligand and simultaneously can serve as a substrate, they hypothesized that they would increase stereoselectivity in C–P coupling processes with aryl compounds, and were delighted when that data confirmed that they did.
Moreover, many other highlighted works are chiral electromagnetic radiation to generate enantioselectivity, low molecular weight gelators, imaging porphyrins with STM, drying induced self-assembly, organic synthesis, CD spectroscopy, asymmetric catalysis, exploring the origins of chirality including the possibility of an extraterrestrial source and various aspects of surface science including surface modification, surface energy control, and porphyrin allayers.
In recognition of his contributions to synthetic methodologies and catalysis, Feringa was given the Novartis Chemistry Lectureship Award 2000–2001. A large part of Feringa's research career has focused on molecular nanotechnology and especially molecular photochemistry and stereochemistry. His contributions in these areas have been recognized in research awards including Körber European Science Prize in 2003, the Spinoza Prize in 2004, and the Prelog Gold Medal in 2005 (ETH-Zürich), Switzerland, He won the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2007, USA, the European Research Council Advanced Grant in 2008, and the Paracelsus Award of the Swiss Chemical Society, in 2008.
Feringa furthermore was awarded the Chirality Medal for distinguished contributions to all aspects of stereochemistry in 2010, the Solvias Ligand Contest Award (shared with John Hartwig, Yale University (US), the Organic Stereochemistry Award in 2011 of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, and the Decennial Van‘t Hoff Medal in 2011 of the Genootschap ter Bevordering van de Natuur-, Genees-, en Heelkunde, in the Netherlands.
Feringa's contributions to the molecular sciences have been recognized with the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the Nagoya Medal of Organic Chemistry, the 2012 Grand Prix Scientifique Cino del Duca, and the Humboldt award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2012, Germany.
In 2013, he won subsequently the Lily European Distinguished Science Award, the Nagoya Gold Medal in Nagoya, Japan, the Yamada-Koga Award in Tokyo, Japan, the Royal Society of Chemistry Award for distinguished service, and the Marie Curie Medal of the Polish Chemical Society.
He has written several invited review articles and book chapters for a number of journals and books including Chemical Reviews, Accounts of Chemical Research, Angewandte and the main textbook in the field of circular dichroism, Comprehensive Chiroptical Spectroscopy.
He won the Theodor Föster Award of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) & Bunsen-Society for Physical Chemistry in 2014, Germany, and the Arthur C. Cope Late Career Scholars Award of the American Chemical Society in 2015. In November 2015, he was the recipient of the "Chemistry for the future Ernest Solvay prize", which was awarded for "his work on groundbreaking research on molecular motors, a research field that paves the way to new therapeutic and technological applications with nanorobots."
On 20 December 2016, Feringa jointly received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Fraser Stoddart and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, for their work on molecular machines. Feringa had been considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize for some time, with The Simpsons including him in a list of candidates in 2010. In 2016, he also received the Hoffman Medal of the German Chemical Society Ben Feringa awarded August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze – website of the Research Center for Functional Molecular Systems (FMS) and the Tetrahedron Prize awarded by Elsevier. Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry – website of Elsevier In 2017, Feringa received the Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Centenary Prize 2017 Winner – website of RSC In August 2018, Feringa was awarded the European Gold Medal presented by the European Chemical Society (EuChemS) during the 7th EuChemS Chemistry Congress, held in Liverpool, UK. In 2019, Feringa accepted the Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Sciences, an honorary position whereby eminent scientists are invited to lecture on their work and interact with the research community in India.
In 2008, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and on 23 November 2016 he was promoted to Commander of the same Order by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands. On 1 December 2016 Feringa was made an Honorary Citizen of Groningen. On 6 April 2017 a street in his birthplace Barger-Compascuum was named Prof. Dr. B. L. Feringadam.
In 1997, he completed the 200 km Elfstedentocht in 12 hours.
He was elected a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in April 2019.
On 2 April 2019, Ben Feringa was conferred an honorary doctoral degree by the University of Johannesburg in recognition of his contributions to the Chemistry field and Scientific community as a whole.
In 2019 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2020.
On 26 November 2017, Feringa, on a visit to South China Normal University in Guangzhou was appointed honorary Professor of South China Normal University. From December 2017, he holds a "green card" in China, and will lead a team researching “self-healing materials” at Shanghai’s East China University of Science and Technology.
Feringa is a co-founder of the contract research company Selact (now a part of Kiadis), which was originally established to provide services in the area of organic synthesis but later developed high throughput screening methods.
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