Richard F. Heck, who shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating techniques to synthesize complex carbon molecules that are now widely used in developing medicine, electronics and other products, died on Oct. 9 in Manila. He was 84.

His death was announced by De La Salle University in Manila, where he was an adjunct professor. He had moved to the Philippines with his wife, Socorro Nardo, who was Filipino, after retiring from the University of Delaware, where he did much of his research.

He had reportedly been treated for diabetes, pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver.

Dr. Heck was a pioneer in deciphering how chemical reactions involving catalysts occur. He conducted his Nobel Prize-winning work during the 1960s and early ’70s, when he discovered what is now called the Heck reaction. The reaction uses a palladium catalyst to create bonds between carbon atoms.

“Almost every pharmaceutical that is made today is made using these organo-palladium couplings,” said Douglass F. Taber, a chemist at the University of Delaware. “So if you take a pill for anything, thank Dick.”