Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel: “The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement ...”

Chemistry was the most important science for Alfred Nobel’s own work. The development of his inventions as well as the industrial processes he employed were based upon chemical knowledge. Chemistry was the second prize area that Nobel mentioned in his will.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Swedish: Nobelpriset i kemi) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on proposal of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry which consists of five members elected by Academy. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, of the Netherlands, "for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions." In more recent years, the Chemistry Laureates have increased our understanding of chemical processes and their molecular basis, and have also contributed to many of the technological advancements we enjoy today.

All Nobel Prizes in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded 103 times to 161 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2011. Frederick Sanger is the only Nobel Laureate who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice, in 1958 and 1980. This means that a total of 160 individuals have received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

• 2012: jointly to: Brian Kent Kobilka (b. 1955) American crystallographer & Robert J. Lefkowitz (b. 1943) American biologist, "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors".
• 2011: דניאל שכטמן Daniel Shechtman (b. 1941) Israeli material scientists, "for the discovery of quasicrystals"
• 2010: jointly to: 鈴木 章, Akira Suzuki (b. 1930) Japanese chemist, "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis".
• 2009: jointly to: עדה יונת Ada E. Yonath (b. 1939) Israeli structural biologist,"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".
• 2008: jointly to: Roger Y. Tsien (b. 1952) American scientist, "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP".
• 2007: Gerhard Ertl (b. 1936) German Chemist, "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces".
• 2006: Roger D. Kornberg (b. 1947) American Biochemist, "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription".
• 2005: jointly to: Richard R. Schrock, (b. 1945) American chemist, "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis".
• 2004: jointly to: Irwin Rose (b. 1926) American biochemist, "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation".
• 2003: Jointly to Roderick MacKinnon (b. 1956) American biochemist and structural chemist "for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels".
• 2002: One half jointly to:Kurt Wüthrich (b. 1938) Swiss chemist, "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution".
• 2001: One half jointly to: K. Barry Sharpless (b. 1941) American organic chemist "for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions".
• 2000: jointly to: 白川 英樹, Hideki Shirakawa (b. 1936) Japanese physical chemist, "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers".
• 1999: أحمد حسن زويل‎, Zewail Ahmed H. Zewail (b. 1946) Egyptian American physical chemist, "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy".
• 1998: jointly to: 'John A. Pople' (1925 – 2004) British American theoretical chemist "for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry".
• 1997: One half jointly to Jens C. Skou (b. 1918) Danish biochemist, "for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase".
• 1996: jountly to: Richard E. Smalley (1943 – 2005) American organic chemist, "for their discovery of fullerenes".
• 1995: jointly to: F. Sherwood Rowland (b. 1927), American atmospheric and environmental chemist, "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone".
• 1994: George A. Olah (b. 1927) Hungarian-born American organic chemist, "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry".
• 1993: jointly to: Michael Smith (1932 – 2000) Canadian biochemist, "for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies".
• 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus (b. 1923) Canadian-Jewish-born chemist, "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems".
• 1991: Richard R. Ernst (b. 1933) Swiss physical chemist, "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy".
• 1990: Elias James Corey (b. 1928) American organic chemist, "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis".
• 1989: jointly to: Thomas R. Cech (b. 1947) American chemist & molecular biologist, "for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA".
• 1988: jointly to: Hartmut Michel (b. 1948) German biochemist & structural chemist, "for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre".
• 1987: jointly to: Charles J. Pedersen (1904 – 1989) American organic chemist, "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity".
• 1986: jointly to: John C. Polanyi (b. 1929) Canadian physical chemist, "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes".
• 1985: Jointly to: Jerome Karle (b. 1918) American physical chemist of Jewish descent, "for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures".
• 1984: Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921 – 2006) American biochemist, "for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix".
• 1983: Henry Taube (1915 – 2005) Canadian-born American inorganic chemist,"for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes".
• 1982: Aaron Klug (b. 1926) English biochemist & structural chemist, "for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes".
• 1981: jointly to: Roald Hoffmann (b. 1937) American theoretical chemist of Jewish Polish descent, "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions".
• 1980: one half was awarded to: Frederick Sanger (b. 1918) English biochemist, "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids".
• 1979: jointly to: Georg Wittig (1897 – 1987) German chemist, "for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis".
• 1978: Peter D. Mitchell (1920 – 1992) English biochemist, "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory".
• 1977: Ilya Prigogine (1917 – 2003) Russian-born Belgian theoretical chemist, of Jewish descent, "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures".
• 1976: William N. Lipscomb (1919 – 2011) American theoretical chemist, "for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding".
• 1975: jointly to: Vladimir Prelog (1906-1998), Croatian chemist, lived and worked in Prague, Zagreb and Zürich "for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions".
• 1974: Paul J. Flory (1910 – 1985) American polymer chemist, "for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules."
• 1973: jointly to: Geoffrey Wilkinson (1921 – 1996) British inorganic chemist, "for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so called sandwich compounds".
• 1972: one half to William H. Stein (1911 – 1980) American biochemist, "for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule".
• 1971: Gerhard Herzberg (1904 – 1999) German-born Canadian physical chemist, "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals"
• 1970: Luis F. Leloir (1906 – 1987) Argentinian biochemist, "for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates".
• 1969: jointly to: Odd Hassel (1897 – 1981) Norwegian organic chemist, "for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry"
• 1968: Lars Onsager (1903 – 1976) Norwegian-born American physical chemist, "for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes"
• 1967: jointly: one half to George Porter (1920 – 2002) British physical chemist, "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equlibrium by means of very short pulses of energy".
• 1966: Robert S. Mulliken (1896 – 1986) American physicist and chemist, "for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method".
• 1965: Robert Burns Woodward (1917 – 1979) American organic chemist, considered by many to be the preeminent organic chemist of the twentieth century, "for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis"
• 1964: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910 – 1994) British biochemist and structural chemist, "for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances".
• 1963: jointly to: Giulio Natta (1903 – 1979) Italian polymer chemist, "for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers."
• 1962: jointly to: Sir John Cowdery Kendrew (1917 – 1997) English biochemist and crystallographer, "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins"
• 1961: Melvin Calvin (1911 – 1997) American biochemist of Russian Jewish descent, "for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants"
• 1960: Willard Frank Libby (1908 – 1980) American physical chemist, "for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science".
• 1959: Jaroslav Heyrovsky (1890 – 1967) Czech physical chemist "for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis".
• 1958: Frederick Sanger (b. 1918) English biochemist "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin".
• 1957: Lord (Alexander R.) Todd (1907 – 1997) Scottish biochemist' "for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes".
• 1956: jointly to: Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov (1896 – 1986) Russian physical chemist, "for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions".
• 1955: Vincent du Vigneaud (1901 – 1978) American biochemist, "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone".
• 1954: Linus Carl Pauling (1901 – 1994) American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author and educator. Only person awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes — in chemistry and for peace.
• 1953: Hermann Staudinger (1881 – 1965) German chemist "for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry".
• 1952: jointly to: Richard Laurence Millington Synge (1914 – 1994) British biochemist, "for their invention of partition chromatography".
• 1951: jointly to: Glenn Theodore Seaborg (1912 – 1999) American nuclear chemist, "for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements".
• 1950: jointly to: Kurt Alder (1902 – 1958), German chemist, "for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis".
• 1949: William Francis Giauque (1895 – 1982) American chemist, "for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures"
• 1948: Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius (1902 – 1971) Swedish physical biochemist, "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins".
• 1947: Sir Robert Robinson (1886 – 1975) English Organic Chemist, "for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids".
• 1946: jointly to: Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904 – 1971) American biochemist, "for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form".
• 1945: Artturi Ilmari Virtanen (1895 – 1973) Finnish Agricultural Biochemist, "for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method".
• 1944: Otto Hahn (1879 – 1968) German nuclear chemist "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei".
• 1943: George de Hevesy (1885 – 1966) Hungarian Chemist of Jewish descent, "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes".
• 1942: not awarded
• 1941: not awarded
• 1940: not awarded
• 1939: jointly to: Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt (1903 – 1995) German Biochemist, "for his work on sex hormones". Was a Nazi collaborator. & Leopold Lavoslav Ružička (1887 – 1976), a Croatian scientist, "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes".
• 1938: Richard Kuhn (1900 – 1967) Austrian-German biochemist "for his work on carotenoids and vitamins". Was a Nazi collaborator.
• 1937: jointly to: Paul Karrer (1889 – 1971) Swiss organic chemist "for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2".
• 1936: Peter (Pie) Josephus Wilhelmus Debye (1884 – 1966) Dutch Physicist and Physical Chemist. "for his contributions to our knowledge of molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments and on the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases".
• 1935: jointly to: Irène Joliot-Curie (1897 – 1956) French Chemist, "for their discovery of artificial radioactivity".
• 1934: Harold Clayton Urey (1893 – 19581) American physical and nuclear chemist, "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen".
• 1933: not awarded
• 1932: Irving Langmuir (1881 – 1957) American chemist & physicist, for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry".
• 1931: jointly to: Friedrich Bergius (1884 – 1949) German chemist, "in recognition of their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods"
• 1930: Hans Fischer (1881 – 1945) German organic chemist, "for his researches into the constitution of haemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of haemin".
• 1929: jointly: Sir Arthur Harden (1865 – 1940) English biochemist, "for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes".
• 1928: Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (December 25, 1876 – June 9, 1959) German chemist, "for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins".
• 1927: Heinrich Otto Wieland (1877 – 1957) German organic chemist, "for his investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances".
• 1926: The (Theodor) Svedberg (1884 – 1971) Swedish physical chemist, "for his work on disperse systems".
• 1925: Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (1865 – 1929) Austrian-Hungarian chemist, "for his demonstration of the heterogenous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid chemistry".
• 1924: not awarded
• 1923: Fritz Pregl (1869 – 1930) Austrian chemist and physician, "for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances".
• 1922: Francis William Aston (1877 – 1945) British chemist and physicist. "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule".
• 1921: Frederick Soddy (1877 – 1956) English radiochemist. "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes".
• 1920: Walther Hermann Nernst (1864 – 1941) was a German physical chemist and physicist, "in recognition of his work in thermochemistry".
• 1919: not awarded
• 1918: Fritz Haber (1868 – 1934) German chemist of Jewish origin, "for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements".
• 1917: not awarded
• 1916: not awarded
• 1915: Richard Martin Willstätter (1872 – 1942) German organic chemist of Jewish origin. "For his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll".
• 1914: Theodore William Richards (1868 – 1928) First American to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of his exact determinations of the atomic weights of a large number of the chemical elements."
• 1913: Alfred Werner (1866 - 1919) Swiss inorganic chemist, "in recognition of his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules by which he has thrown new light on earlier investigations and opened up new fields of research especially in inorganic chemistry".
• 1912: jointly: Paul Sabatier (1854-1941) French organic chemist, "for his method of hydrogenating organic compounds in the presence of finely disintegrated metals whereby the progress of organic chemistry has been greatly advanced in recent years".
• 1911: Marie Curie (née Sklodowska) (1867 – 1934) Polish–French physicist–chemist. Pioneering researcher of radioactivity. First person honored with two Nobel Prizes — in physics and chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".
• 1910: Otto Wallach (1847 – 1931) German chemist (of Jewish origin), "in recognition of his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his pioneer work in the field of alicyclic compounds".
• 1909: Wilhelm Ostwald (1853 – 1932) Baltic German chemist, "in recognition of his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction".
• 1908: Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist known as the father of nuclear physics, "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".
• 1907: Eduard Buchner (1860 – 1917) German chemist and enzymologist, "for his biochemical researches and his discovery of cell-free fermentation".
• 1906: Henri Moissan (1852 – 1907) French chemist, "in recognition of the great services rendered by him in his investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, and for the adoption in the service of science of the electric furnace called after him".
• 1905: Adolf von Baeyer (1835 -1917) German chemist, "in recognition of his services in the advancement of organic chemistry and the chemical industry, through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds".
• 1904: Sir William Ramsay (1852 – 1916) Scottish chemist. "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system".
• 1903: Svante August Arrhenius (1859 – 1927) Swedish scientist (physicist and chemist), one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry, "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation".
• 1902: Hermann Emil Fischer (1852 – 1919) German organic chemist, "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses".
• 1901: Jacobus Henricus van't Hof Jr. (1852 – 1911) Dutch physical and organic chemist, "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions".