The Chemistry Prize committee has unanimously selected the following two candidates to equally share the 1989 Wolf Prize in Chemistry:
Duilio Arigoni
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Zurich, Switzerland
Alan R. Battersby,
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
for their fundamental contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of enzymic reactions and of the biosynthesis of natural products, in particular the pigments of life.
Professors Duilio Arigoni and Alan Battersby have performed pioneering studies on the elucidation of the mechanisms by which natural products are synthesized in biological organisms.
Duilio Arigoni has explored the detailed stereochemical pathways by which enzymes convert their substrates into products. In particular his strategy of penetrating into the structure of enzyme-substrate interactions by concentrating on the detailed stereochemical fate of isotopic substrate labels, led hill to make basic contributions to the mechanism of enzymic reactions requiring coenzyme B12, one of the 'pigments of life'.
The major efforts of Alan R. Battersby have been focused on the biosynthesis of the 'pigments of life' haem, chlorophyll and vitamin B12, that are built on closely related tetrapyrrolic structural frameworks. He has demonstrated and elucidated the essential role played by two enzymes, deaminase and cosynthetase, in the construction of the tetrapyrrolic ring with its specific structural features.