Peter Schultz bags Solvay's 'Chemistry for Future' award

The formal statement of the jury chaired by Hakan Wennerström, Professor at the University of Lund, motivates the decision as follows: "For Professor Schultz's multiple scientific contributions at the interface between chemistry and biology, in particular for the exploitation of molecular diversity and the rational expansion of the genetic code of the living organisms."

Professor Schultz's ground breaking work is impacting many scientific fields, including biotechnology and medicine. It also has important implications for regenerative medicine, and the treatment of infectious disease, autoimmune disease and cancer.

Unanimous in their decision, the five jury members of the Solvay Prize, amongst them two Nobel prize winners, took into account several criteria including scientific excellence, potential and actual scientific and societal impact, and scientific activity. Professor Schultz successfully delivered on all these requirements and proved to be a worthy winner.

In his most recent work, Professor Schultz pioneered a method that enables the expansion of the genetic codes of living organisms to include new building blocks beyond the 20 amino acids common to all forms of life. This ability, demonstrated with over seventy synthetic amino acids, has created new powerful tools in protein engineering, cell biology and biochemistry. Professor Schultz's ground breaking work is impacting many scientific fields, including biotechnology and medicine.

His early work exploited the molecular diversity of the immune system to develop antibodies that selectively catalyze chemical reactions, much like natural enzymes. He extended these combinatorial concepts to many areas of chemistry, biology and medicine, and was the first to apply this approach to materials science, which made it possible to simultaneously synthesize and characterize the properties of many different materials for use in electronic devices, catalysis, energy storage and the environment.

More recently, by developing highly sophisticated methods to screen "chemical libraries" for their effects on living cells, Schultz's team identified small, biologically active molecules with important implications for regenerative medicine and the treatment of infectious disease, autoimmune disease and cancer.