Sauvage, Stoddart, Feringa Win 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

(Bloomberg) -- Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa were awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the design and synthesis of molecular machines.”

“They have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Wednesday. "The development of computing demonstrates how the miniaturization of technology can lead to a revolution.”

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968. The total amount for each of the 2016 prizes is 8 million kronor ($934,000).