1. Ben Feringa is the Jacobus van 't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences, at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and an Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
24 Facts About Ben Feringa
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Ben Feringa was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Sir J Fraser Stoddart and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines".
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Ben Feringa was the second of ten siblings in a Catholic family.
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Ben Feringa spent his youth on the family's farm, which is directly on the border with Germany, in Barger-Compascuum in the Bourtange moor.
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Together with his wife Betty Ben Feringa, he has three daughters.
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Ben Feringa received his MSc degree with distinction from the University of Groningen in 1974.
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Ben Feringa holds over 30 patents and has published over 650 peer reviewed research papers to date, cited more than 30,000 times and has an h-index in excess of 90.
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Fraser Stoddart 8.
Ben Feringa has guided over 100 PhD students over his career.
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Ben Feringa found that the early introduction of chiroptical molecular switches, based on the design of the first chiral overcrowded alkenes and the demonstration of optically controlled molecular switching and amplification of chirality in mesoscopic systems, lead to molecular rotary motors in which chirality plays a critical role in achieving the same function achieved by nature, for example, the unidirectional rotation of retinal in rhodopsin.
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Ben Feringa is a member of many chemical and scientific related societies: In 1998, Ben Feringa was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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Ben Feringa is an elected member, since 2006, and Academy Professor, since 2008, of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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At the KNAW Ben Feringa served as vice-president and Chair of Board of the Science Division.
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On 13 October 2016, Ben Feringa was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society.
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Ben Feringa has written several invited review articles and book chapters for a number of journals and books including Chemical Reviews, Accounts of Chemical Research, Angewandte and the main textbook in the field of circular dichroism, Comprehensive Chiroptical Spectroscopy.
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On 20 December 2016, Feringa jointly received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Sir J Fraser Stoddart and Jean-Pierre Sauvage, for their work on molecular machines.
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Ben Feringa had been considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize for some time, with The Simpsons including him in a list of candidates in 2010.
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In 2017, Ben Feringa received the Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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In 2019, Ben Feringa accepted the Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Sciences, an honorary position whereby eminent scientists are invited to lecture on their work and interact with the research community in India.
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On 1 December 2016 Ben Feringa was made an Honorary Citizen of Groningen.
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Ben Feringa was elected a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in April 2019.
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On 2 April 2019, Ben Feringa was conferred an honorary doctoral degree by the University of Johannesburg in recognition of his contributions to the Chemistry field and Scientific community as a whole.
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Ben Feringa was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2020.
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Ben Feringa has served as an editorial board member for several journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, including Chemical Communications, the Faraday Transactions of the Royal Society, and as Chair of the Editorial Board of Chemistry World.
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Ben Feringa is a co-founder of the contract research company Selact, which was originally established to provide services in the area of organic synthesis but later developed high throughput screening methods.