A United States-based Indian scientist has alleged flaws in the selection of winners of the world Nobel Prize for the year 2000 and claimed that his work had been sidelined while three others were selected for the prestigious award.

Prof Mrinal Thakur, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department of Auburn University in Alabama, has been nominated for the prize for the third time by his university this year.

He told reporters in Mumbai on July 4 that his discovery of 'nonconjugated' conductive polymers having isolated double bonds as far back as 1988 had proved the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences's basis for the selection of the 2000 winners incorrect.

In 2000, Professors Alan J Heager of the University of California, Alan G MacDiarmid of the University of Pennsylvania, USA and Hideki Shirakawa of the University of Tsukuba, Japan received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 'the discovery and development of electrically conductive polymers'.

The Nobel foundation in the citation paper of the three winners had mentioned that 'a key property of a conductive  polymer is the presence of conjugated double bonds along the backbone of the polymer. In conjugation, the bonds between carbon atoms are alternately single and double'.

However, Thakur has questioned the decision of the Nobel Foundation to assume that a polymer had to be conjugated to become electrically conductive.

He claimed that his publications during 1988 to 2002 and his patented sensors had pointed out that 'conjugation is not a pre-requisite for a polymer to be conductive and that a polymer must have at least one double bond in the repeat to become conductive'.

He explained that interaction with a dopant (an electron acceptor) causes transfer of an electron from the double bond to the dopant creating a hole at the double bond site and electrical conduction occurs via intersite hopping of holes.

Thakur said the Nobel foundation had ignored his case in spite of having scientific facts on record that 'conjugation is not a pre-requisite for a polymer to be conductive but must have at least one double bond in the repeat'.

He alleged that while selecting the three scientists for the year 2000 chemistry prize, his work A class of conducting polymers having non-conjugated backbones, published in Macromolecules in 1988 and his subsequent experiments and commercial applications thereof in the form of sensors of various types, including 'stress sensors', sensors to detect toxic gases and other security applications, were totally sidelined by the Nobel Foundation.

Thakur, a native of West Bengal and a student of Vishwabharati University, said examples of these non-conjugated polymers include 1,4-polyisoprene, which has one double bond and three single bonds in the repeat.

External Link:
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2000