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American chemist and Nobel laureate Prof. Richard Heck died in Manila after years of illnesses. He was 84.
“In 2010, American chemist Prof. Richard Heck — along with Japanese Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki — won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing new ways to bind carbon atoms that were used in research to fight cancer and produce thin computer screens,” reports GMA News Online.
The report noted: “He was affiliated with the University of Delaware in the United States when he developed his work on palladium as a catalyst, called the Heck reaction, in the 1960s and early 1970s. The two Japanese scientists came through with their variants of the same process in the late 1970s.”
Heck was married to a Filipina named Socorro Nardo-Heck. They didn’t have a child. They had decided to retire in the Philippines in 2006. Socorro died in 2012. A Reuters report said that “Heck was often depressed after his wife died” and “had been in and out of the hospital since 2013, when he suffered a serious bout of pneumonia.”
The Reuters report revealed that “Heck survived prostate cancer and had been taking medication for diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and slight dementia.”
According to Socorro’s nephew, Michael Nardo, who helped take care of Heck, the retired chemist was relying on his monthly pension of USD$2,500 to get by. Aside from Michael, two personal nurses took turns taking care of Heck.
At some poiint, Heck was said to have been “rushed to a private hospital due to severe vomiting, but was refused admission due to unpaid bills.” Heck died on Oct 10.
