Mumbai: An Indian scientist from Auburn University in Alabama, USA, has alleged flaws in the selection of winners of world famous Nobel Prize for the year 2000 and claimed that his work had been sidelined while three others were selected for the prestigious award.

Prof Mrinal Thakur, head of Mechanical Engineering Department of Auburn University, who has been nominated for Nobel Prize for the third time by his university in 2003, told reporters on July 4 that his discovery of "nonconjugated" conductive polymers having isolated double bonds as far back as 1988 had proved Nobel Foundation's statements incorrect in the selection of Nobel awards for the year 2000.

He has questioned the decision of Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to assume that a polymer had to be conjugated to become electrically conductive – the basis for Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2000 to three scientists.

Alleging flaws in the selection of the Nobel winners of 2000, Thakur said that in spite of having scientific facts on record that "conjugation is not a pre-requisite for a polymer to be conductive, but must have at least one double bond in the repeat", the Nobel Foundation has ignored it.

He alleged that while selecting three scientists for Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2000, his work on "a class of conducting polymers having non-conjugated backbones", published in 'Macromolecules' in 1988 and his subsequent experiments and commercial applications thereof in the form of sensors of various types including "stress sensors", sensor to detect toxic gases and other security applications, were totally sidelined by Nobel Foundation.

In 2000, Professors Alan J Heager of University of California, Alan G MacDiarmid of University of Pennsylvania, USA and Hideki Shirakawa of University of Tsukuba, Japan received Nobel Prize in chemistry for "the discovery and development of electrically conductive polymers".

The Nobel Foundation in the citation paper of the three winners of 2000 Nobel Prize had mentioned that "A key property of a conductive polymer is the presence of conjugated double bonds along the backbone of the polymer. In conjugation, the bonds between carbon atoms are alternately single and double."

However, Thakur said his publications during 1988 to 2002 and his patented sensors had pointed out that "Conjugation is not a pre-requisite for a polymer to be conductive and that a polymer must have at least one double bond in the repeat to become conductive."

Thakur explained that interaction with a dopant (an electron acceptor) causes transfer of an electron from the double bond to the dopant creating a hole at the double bond site and electrical conduction occurs via intersite hopping of holes.

PTI