American Richard Heck and Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a chemical method that has allowed scientists to make medicines and better electronics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday in Stockholm that the award honours their development of palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic systems. The awards were established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel – the inventor of dynamite, and are always handed out on December 10, the anniversary of his death in 1896.