In 1953 the Nobel Prize was awarded to Hermann Staudinger for his discovery of macromolecules (polymerisation) and, in 1963, to Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta for their PE/PP catalysis technique. This then marked the sum total of awards to plastics researchers from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. A further prize can now be added to these with the 2000 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The two US researchers, Alan J. Heeger of the University of California in Santa Barbara and Alan G. MacDiarmid of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, together with Japanese chemist Hideki Shirakawa of the University of Tsukuba have now been awarded this year´s highly renowned scientific prize.

Conductive polymers are just beginning to come into widespread use. They are becoming increasingly popular as semi-conductor materials in microelectronics and are creating a great stir as OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) particularly in ultraflat displays. Prize-winner Alan Heeger, for instance, was one of the founder members of the Uniax Corp., a company active in this field, which was acquired by DuPont in spring 2000. Conductive polymers are also central elements of future-oriented energy technology, such as solar and fuel cells. Windows that darken automatically when the sun shines on them similarly involve the use of conductive polymer films.