Richard F. Heck (August 15, 1931 – October 9, 2015) was an American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry (2010). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, specifically the reaction that bears his name - the Heck reaction. His groundbreaking research revolutionized the field of organic synthesis by providing a powerful method for constructing carbon-carbon bonds. Heck was a professor at the University of Delaware and made fundamental contributions to modern synthetic chemistry.