Scientists, friends bid farewell to Nobel laureate in chemistry
Filipino Alma Nardo talks beside a picture of her brother-in-law American Nobel laureate for chemistry Richard Heck during burial rites in suburban Quezon city, north of Manila, Philippines Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015. Heck designed a method of building complex molecules that has helped fight cancer, protect crops and make electronic devices. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
NOBEL Prize winner Richard Heck, an American chemist, was reunited on Tuesday morning with the “treasure” of his life: his Filipino wife Socorro Nardo-Heck.
Heck was laid to rest at Holy Cross Memorial Park in Novaliches, Quezon City, next to Socorro, his wife of more than 30 years, who passed away in 2012, said Socorro’s nephew Michael Nardo.
Heck, 84, died on Friday, on his third day of confinement at East Avenue Medical Center in Quezon City after suffering from a host of ailments, including diabetes and liver cirrhosis, Nardo said.
His modest life in the Philippines belied his accomplishments in the scientific world.
Heck, whose interest in plants as a child led him to a career in chemistry, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010 with two Japanese scientists. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki designed the technique to bind together carbon atoms, a key step in assembling the skeletons of organic compounds used in medicine, agriculture and electronics.
Carbon atoms are normally shy about pairing up. The winning approach was to use atoms of the metal palladium kind of like a singles bar, a place where pairs of carbon atoms are jammed together and encouraged to bond. This idea, called palladium-catalyzed cross coupling, was easier to do than previous methods.
The Nobel committee cited the technique as “one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today (and) vastly improved the possibilities of chemists to create sophisticated chemicals.”
Heck Reaction
Heck published his initial work in 1968 and an improved method in 1972. In 1977, Negishi developed a variant of the palladium approach and two years later Suzuki developed another. The chemical process has also become known as Heck Reaction.
His major contribution has not been lost on the scientific community in the Philippines.
On Monday evening, De La Salle University (DLSU) organized a necrological service at Heck’s wake at La Funeraria Paz on Araneta Avenue, also in Quezon City.
The service was attended by Filipino scientists and academicians from groups and institutions, such as the National Academy of Science and Technology, National Research Council of the Philippines, DLSU chemistry department, Ateneo de Manila University, University of the Philippines, Philippine Federation of Chemistry Society, and the Integrated Chemists of the Philippines (ICP).
Alvin Culaba, a DLSU mechanical engineering professor, said Heck was “so simple and very human and very humble,” and disliked public attention despite his achievements.
Humble beginnings
In a 2012 speech he gave to accept an honorary degree from DLSU, Heck said he came from humble beginnings—the son of a department store salesman and a housewife in a suburb of Massachusetts.
He said he got interested about nutrients and pigments in plants when as a boy, his family moved to a new home on a barren lot in California. “I had never thought the simple work of planting an empty yard would bloom and peak into an achievement of the noblest honor in the world of science,” he said.
In a statement, ICP said: “Heck’s discoveries laid the foundation for all modern cross-coupling reactions. These reactions have revolutionized organic chemistry and are used to make new organic materials, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and enabling technologies that impact our daily lives in innumerable ways.”
Quiet life
Heck led such a quiet life that the local scientific community was not even aware he was living in Quezon City until he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010.
After that, “[Heck] was more than happy to attend scientific events. Even [the 2011 Philippine] Chemistry Congress, he attended in Cebu,” Culaba said.
“He loves to meet with … students. I could sense that he wanted to inspire the young to pursue science and hopefully to share his experience how he started to like chemistry,” Culaba said.
Culaba said it was apparent Heck started living in the Philippine out of love for Socorro.
“I may not strictly be a foreigner to the Philippines, as I find my bearings in this country with a high sense of pride. So much so that after my retirement from the University of Delaware, where I sat on its faculty until 1989, I realized the prospect of relocating permanently in the Philippines,” Culaba quoted Heck as saying.
“For all you know, I married a Filipina, a woman I so dearly loved …. She was a treasure to my life more than any accolade I have ever had in my lifetime.”
‘Last words’
Culaba also shared an excerpt in Heck’s speech that may very well have served as his last words. “I find my meaning as a scientist in what I have been able to make of my country, in what I have been able to contribute to significantly better the lives of peoples across cultures and societies.”
“I find my meaning in what I can bequeath to this world, when the glory and splendor of a celebrated achievement begins to wane, when I would have to finally desert this earthly habitat and leave myself to the Creator,” Heck had said in his speech.
An emotional Culaba ended his eulogy with the words, “To Professor Heck, goodbye and thank you.”
Nardo said that after Heck lost Socorro in 2012 and was struck by pneumonia in 2013, “he only had half of his usual strength.”
Heck also had a pacemaker and a hip replacement.
Since the Heck couple decided to spend their retirement in the Philippines in 2006, Nardo, his wife and his daughter had been living with the Hecks in a rented bungalow in Tandang Sora, Quezon City.
The Nardos had been acting as Heck’s immediate family since Socorro died, hiring two private caretakers to attend to his needs. “He was quiet, simple. A little strict, but he never gets angry,” Nardo, 40, said of Heck.
Heck began to be in “critical” condition on Tuesday, when he started vomiting after breakfast and when his stomach started to swell.
Nardo and Heck’s caretakers initially brought him to St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City, where they had been taking him for treatment.
Heck was accommodated in the emergency room but a “misunderstanding” about his insurance company failing to settle previous bills arose, prompting the Nardo family to transfer him within the day to East Avenue Medical Center.
Nardo declined to go into details regarding the issue, saying that it had already been settled and that he would rather his “uncle” be remembered for his accomplishments.
He said the Nobel laureate had not been “abandoned” as he spent his sunset days in the Philippines, as earlier media reports seemed to imply. With a report from AP
