University of Groningen adds special bicycle rack for Nobel Laureates because they deserve their own parking spaces

The University of Groningen has created a special bicycle rack for the Nobel Prize winner Professor Ben Feringa to recognise his achievements.

It is a custom that at universities around the world, Nobel Laureates have their own parking facilities, but the university was presented with a problem when it realised that the Professor generally cycled to work on campus.

So on Thursday 23 August 2017, a special Nobel Laureate bike rack was erected at the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Ben L. Feringa was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Professor Jean-Pierre Sauvage (France) and Professor Sir James Fraser Stoddart (UK) for their work on the development of molecular machines.

Feringa has been Professor of Organic Chemistry since 1988.

His discovery in 1999 of the ‘molecular motor’, a light-driven rotating molecule, is widely recognized as a world-class breakthrough in understanding the idea that molecular motors can transport themselves through the bloodstream in order to deliver drugs to previously unreachable locations in the human body with a high degree of accuracy.