The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1984 was awarded to Bruce Merrifield "for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix".
 

Creating the proteins that perform the host of tasks necessary to support life is not unlike creating a chain, link by link. In this case, the links, or amino acids, are attached sequentially to the growing chain, or peptide. Once the peptide is made, the chain folds up, either on its own or with others, to form a three-dimensional protein that can carry out its particular task. The elegance of this method is that any by-products and unused starting ingredients that are not attached to the anchored peptide can be easily washed away after each step in the process, increasing yields to staggering levels.