Chemistry Nobel Prize goes to invention of molecular machines

Miniature robots that doctors could guide through a patient's body to kill cancer cells are closer to reality thanks to winners of this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Three winners share the 727,000 prize for developing nanoscale machines--1000th the width of a human hair--that pave the way for applications in medicine, computing and engineering. The winners were Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg in France, Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, and Bernard Feringa of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Each devised different groups of molecules with moving parts that they could control remotely, despite their tiny size. "It's early days, but once you can control movement, you have many possibilities," said Feringa, interviewed after receiving notification of the prize.