Robert Bruce Merrifield was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for the invention of solid phase peptide synthesis. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1984, announced October 17, 1984. Bruce Merrifield, “for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix”. Bruce Merrifield: born 1921, Fort Worth, TX, USA. Wiki link Data: the Nobel Foundation (CC0).