The Nobel Prize 2010 in Chemistry announced- "Palladium catalysed cross-coupling in organic synthesis

The 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to three professors for a tool to make carbon-carbon bonds in organic chemistry, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

The professors are Richard Heck of the University of Delaware, Ei-Ichi Negishi of Purdue University and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University.
The tool the professors devised is called palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling, according to the committee.
Negishi told reporters by phone from the United States that he was asleep when he heard the news an hour earlier. He said winning the prize was a dream of his, but he didn't know whether he would win.
The tool has applications in a wide range of fields, from agriculture and pharmaceuticals to coatings for electronic components, like chips, the Nobel committee said.

"The key word here is versatility," Negishi said. "One of our dreams is to be able to synthesize any organic compounds of importance, whether it is medicinally important
compounds ... or important from the point of view of material science. And we believe that our technology or our chemistry will be applicable to a very wide range of compounds, without knowing what they might be."