The 2014 Wolf Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Professor Chi-Huey Wong, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA. Since 1978, the Wolf Foundation annually awards prizes of $100,000 to a number of laureates in the sciences and the arts to honor their contributions for the benefit of mankind.
Chi-Huey Wong is honored for pioneering “the development of programmable chemical and enzymatic synthesis methods that enable the previously impossible or infeasible synthesis and study of classes of compounds, especially complex carbohydrates, glycoproteins and related substances, which are vitally important in biology and medicine”.
The award ceremony was held at the Knesset, Jerusalem, Israel, by President Shimon Peres on June 1, 2014.
Chi-Huey Wong, born 1948 in Taiwan, studied chemistry and biochemical sciences at Taiwan National University, Taipei, and carried out his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under the guidance of George Whitesides at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. After postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, Wong started his independent career at Texas A&M University, College Station, USA, in 1983. He was made Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, in 1989.
Since 2003, Wong became the founding director of The Genomics Research Center of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan. In 2006, he was appointed by the President of the Republic of China to head Academia Sinica, the national academy of science in Taiwan.
Wong received many awards, inclusing the F. A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2008 and the International Enzyme Engineering Award in 1999. He serves on the Editorial or Advisory Boards of many journal, including Angewandte Chemie, Chemistry—An Asian Journal, and the Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry.
Selected publications by Chi-Huey Wong:
- New Continuous Fluorometric Assay for Bacterial Transglycosylase Using Förster Resonance Energy Transfer,
Shih-Hsien Huang, Wei-Shen Wu, Lin-Ya Huang, Wen-Feng Huang, Wei-Chen Fu, Po-Ting Chen, Jim-Min Fang, Wei-Chieh Cheng, Ting-Jen R. Cheng, Chi-Huey Wong,
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135 (45), 17078–17089.
DOI: 10.1021/ja407985m - Immunization of Fucose-containing Polysaccharides from Reishi Mushroom Induces Antibodies Against Tumor-associated Globo H-series Epitopes,
Shih-Fen Liao, Chi-Hui Liang, Ming-Yi Ho, Tsui-Ling Hsu, Tsung-I Tsai, Yves S.-Y. Hsieh, Chih-Ming Tsai, Shiou-Ting Li, Yang-Yu Cheng, Shu-Ming Tsao, Tung-Yi Lin, Zong-Yan Lin, Wen-Bin Yang, Chien-Tai Ren, Kuo-I Lin, Kay-Hooi Khoo, Chun-Hung Lin, Hsien-Yeh Hsu, Chung-Yi Wu, Chi-Huey Wong,
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 2013, 110 (34), 13809–13814.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1312457110 - Synthesis of Neisseria meningitidis Serogroup W135 Capsular Oligosaccharides for Immunogenicity Comparison and Vaccine Development,
Shiou-Ting Li, Tzu-Lung Lin, Yang-Yu Cheng, Tsung-Hsien Sun, Jin-Town Wang, Ting-Jen R. Cheng, Kwok Kong Tony Mong, Chi-Huey Wong, Chung-Yi Wu,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 9157–9161.
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201302540
