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Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa were awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their work on molecular machines.

Operating on a scale a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, these “machines” are specially designed molecules with movable parts that produce controlled movements when energy is added. They may one day be used to build new materials, operate microscopic sensors, and create energy-storage mechanisms too tiny to be seen with the naked eye.

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“These three laureates … have opened this entire field of molecular machinery and shown us that you can make machine-like function at molecular level,” said Olof Ramström, a member of Nobel chemistry committee.

He compared Sauvage, Stoddart and Feringa’s breakthroughs to the invention of the first crude electric motors. Scientists in the early 19th century couldn’t envision the countless ways that their spinning cranks and wheels would be put to use. But they’d already “created a revolution” he said.