Russia said this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry “once again shows” that its national school of scientific chemistry is one of the world’s leading, after the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded researcher Alexei Ekimov, reports Tasse.
Portraits of Nobel MedalistsPhoto: DreamsTime / Wwphoto
“A scientist with Soviet and Russian roots receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the first time since the mid-20th century, when Soviet academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov became the laureate in 1956. This year’s award once again indicates that the national school of scientific chemistry is a world leader,” Stepan Kalmikov, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told TASS.
He emphasized that Ekimov’s award “confirms the highest global level of domestic chemical science.”
His comments to Russian state media came shortly after the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that Ekimov is one of the 3 laureates of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with researchers Moungi G. Bawendi and Louis E. Brus from the United States.
The award was given for the “discovery and synthesis of quantum dots”. Nanoparticles and quantum dots are used in LED lights and TV screens and can also be used to guide surgeons as they remove cancerous tissue.
“Independently of each other, Ekimov and Brus succeeded in creating quantum dots, and Bawendi revolutionized chemical production,” the Swedish Academy said.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 was awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis E Brus and Alexey Ekimov for nanotechnology, with the discovery of the quantum dot, and quantum bridges) and are considered the basis for many technologies, from optical communications, to future computer… pic.twitter.com/SKFReDXjv4
— Agenzia ANSA (@Agenzia_Ansa) October 4, 2023
The awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was marked by an embarrassing mistake by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which accidentally revealed the names of the laureates before the official announcement.
Who is Alexei Ekimov?
The researcher was born on February 28, 1945 in the Soviet Union and in 1967 he graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University).
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, he worked since 1977 at the Leningrad State Optical Institute.
In 1999 he became a top researcher at Nanocrystals Technology, a privately held company in New York. He was visiting professor at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and Claude Bernard University in Lyon, Max Planck Institute in Munich and Osaka University (Japan).
Ekimov is a laureate of the USSR State Prize in 1976 for a series of works on “the detection and study of new phenomena associated with the optical orientation of the spins of electrons and nuclei in semiconductors”.
In 2006, the Optical Society of the United States awarded Ekimov, along with researchers Alexander Efros and Louis Bruce, the RW Wood Award for “the discovery of nanocrystalline quantum dots and pioneering studies of their electronic and optical properties.”
