Nobel Prize in Chemistry

File:Vant Hoff.jpg

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (1852 – 1911) was the first person to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions.

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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Swedish: Nobelpriset i kemi) is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine since 1901. This award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and widely regarded as the most prestigious award that a scientist in the various fields of chemistry can receive. 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." The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. In 2007 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Gerhard Ertl (of Germany) "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces"; he was awarded the prize amount of 10,000,000 SEK (slightly more than €1 million, or US$1.4 million).

Award ceremony

Main article: Nobel Prize

The committee and institution serving as the selection board for the prize typically announce the names of the laureates in October. The prize is then awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. "The highlight of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm is when each Nobel Laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty the King of Sweden. ... Under the eyes of a watching world, the Nobel Laureate receives three things: a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the prize amount" ("What the Nobel Laureates Receive"). Later the Nobel Banquet is held in Stockholm City Hall.

A maximum of three laureates and two different works may be selected. The award can be given to a maximum of three recipients per year. It consists of a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash grant. The grant is currently approximately 10 million SEK, slightly more than €1 million (US$1.4 million).

Nomination and selection

Main article: Nobel Prize

Compared with some other prizes, the Nobel Prize nomination and selection process is long and rigorous, a key reason why it has become the most important prize in chemistry.

The Nobel Laureates in chemistry are selected by a committee that consists of five members elected by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In its first stage, several thousand people are asked to nominate candidates. These names are scrutinized and discussed by experts until only the winners remain. This slow and thorough process, insisted upon by Alfred Nobel, is arguably what gives the prize its importance.

Forms, which amount to a personal and exclusive invitation, are sent to about three thousand selected individuals to invite them to submit nominations. The names of the nominees are never publicly announced, and neither are they told that they have been considered for the Prize. Nomination records are sealed for fifty years. In practice some nominees do become known. It is also common for publicists to make such a claim, founded or not.

The nominations are screened by committee, and a list is produced of approximately two hundred preliminary candidates. This list is forwarded to selected experts in the field. They remove all but approximately fifteen names. The committee submits a report with recommendations to the appropriate institution.

While posthumous nominations are not permitted, awards can occur if the individual died in the months between the nomination and the decision of the prize committee.

The award in chemistry require that the significance of achievements being recognized is "tested by time." In practice it means that the lag between the discovery and the award is typically on the order of 20 years and can be much longer. As a downside of this approach, not all scientists live long enough for their work to be recognized. Some important scientific discoveries are never considered for a Prize, as the discoverers may have died by the time the impact of their work is realized.

List of Laureates

The following chart is assembled from the official list on the website of the Nobel Foundation ("All Nobel Laureates in Chemistry"). As of 2007, The Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to 150 individuals.

Year	Name	Country	Citation
1901	Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff	Netherlands	"for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions"
1902	Hermann Emil Fischer	Germany	"for his work on sugar and purine syntheses"
1903	Svante August Arrhenius	Sweden	"for his electrolytic theory of dissociation"
1904	Sir William Ramsay	United Kingdom	"for his discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system"
1905	Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer	Germany	"for his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds"
1906	Henri Moissan	France	"for his investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, and for the electric furnace named after him"
1907	Eduard Buchner	Germany	"for his biochemical research and his discovery of cell-free fermentation"
1908	Ernest Rutherford	New Zealand United Kingdom	"for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances"
1909	Wilhelm Ostwald	Germany	"his work on catalysis and for his investigations into chemical equilibria and rates of reaction"
1910	Otto Wallach	Germany	"for his work in the field of alicyclic compounds"
1911	Maria Skłodowska-Curie	Poland France	"for her discovery of radium and polonium "
1912	Victor Grignard	France	"for his the discovery of the Grignard reagent"
	Paul Sabatier	France	"for his method of hydrogenating organic compounds"
1913	Alfred Werner	Switzerland	"for his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules"
1914	Theodore William Richards	United States of America	"for his determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of elements"
1915	Richard Martin Willstätter	Germany	"for his research on plant pigments"
1916	no award
1917	no award
1918	Fritz Haber	Germany	"for his synthesis of ammonia"
1919	no award
1920	Walther Hermann Nernst	Germany	"for his work in thermochemistry"
1921	Frederick Soddy	United Kingdom	"for his work on the chemistry of radioactive substances and investigations into isotopes"
1922	Francis William Aston	United Kingdom	"for his discovery of isotopes in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his whole-number rule"
1923	Fritz Pregl	Austria	"for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances"
1925	Richard Adolf Zsigmondy	Germany	"for his demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and the methods used"
1926	Theodor Svedberg	Sweden	"for his work on disperse systems"
1927	Heinrich Otto Wieland	Germany	"for his investigations of the bile acids and related substances"
1928	Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus	Germany	"for his research into sterols and their connection with vitamins"
1929	Arthur Harden Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin	United Kingdom Sweden	"for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes"
1930	Hans Fischer	Germany	"for his research into haemin and chlorophyll"
1931	Carl Bosch Friedrich Bergius	Germany Germany	"for their contributions to chemical high pressure methods"
1932	Irving Langmuir	United States	"for his work in surface chemistry"
1934	Harold Clayton Urey	United States	"for his discovery of heavy hydrogen"
1935	Frédéric Joliot Irene Joliot-Curie	France France	"for their synthesis of new radioactive elements"
1936	Petrus (Peter) Josephus Wilhelmus Debye	Netherlands	"for his work on molecular structure through investigations on dipole moments and the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases"
1937	Walter Norman Haworth	United Kingdom	"for his work on carbohydrates and vitamin C"
	Paul Karrer	Switzerland	"for his work on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2"
1938	Richard Kuhn	Germany	"for his work on carotenoids and vitamins"
1939	Adolf Butenandt	Germany	"for his work on sex hormones"
	Leopold Ružička	Croatia / Switzerland	"for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes"
1940	no award
1941	no award
1942	no award
1943	George de Hevesy	Hungary	"for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers to study chemical processes"
1944	Otto Hahn	Germany	"for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei"
1945	Artturi Ilmari Virtanen	Finland	"for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method"
1946	James Batcheller Sumner	United States	"for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized"
	John Howard Northrop Wendell Meredith Stanley	United States United States	"for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form"
1947	Sir Robert Robinson	United Kingdom	"for his investigations on plant products, especially the alkaloids"
1948	Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius	Sweden	"for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis"
1949	William Francis Giauque	United States	"for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics"
1950	Otto Paul Hermann Diels Kurt Alder	West Germany West Germany	"for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis. Diels-Alder reaction."
1951	Edwin Mattison McMillan Glenn Theodore Seaborg	United States United States	"for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements"
1952	Archer John Porter Martin Richard Laurence Millington Synge	United Kingdom United Kingdom	"for their invention of partition chromatography"
1953	Hermann Staudinger	West Germany	"for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry"
1954	Linus Carl Pauling	United States	"for his research into the nature of the chemical bond"
1955	Vincent du Vigneaud	United States	"for his work on sulphur compounds, especially the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone"
1956	Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov (Никола́й Никола́евич Семёнов)	United Kingdom Soviet Union	"for their research into the mechanism of chemical reactions"
1957	Sir Alexander Todd	United Kingdom	"for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes"
1958	Frederick Sanger	United Kingdom	"for his work on the structure of proteins, especially insulin"
1959	Jaroslav Heyrovský	Czechoslovakia	"for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis"
1960	Willard Frank Libby	United States	"for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination"
1961	Melvin Calvin	United States	"for his research on carbon dioxide assimilation in plants"
1962	Max Ferdinand Perutz John Cowdery Kendrew	United Kingdom United Kingdom	"for their studies of the structures of globular proteins"
1963	Karl Ziegler Giulio Natta	West Germany Italy	"for their discoveries relating to high polymers"
1964	Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin	United Kingdom	"for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances"
1965	Robert Burns Woodward	United States	"for his achievements in organic synthesis"
1966	Robert Sanderson Mulliken	United States	"for his work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules"
1967	Manfred Eigen	West Germany	"for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy"
	Ronald G. W. Norrish George Porter	United Kingdom United Kingdom
1968	Lars Onsager	Norway United States	"for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name"
1969	Derek H. R. Barton Odd Hassel	United Kingdom Norway	"for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation"
1970	Luis F. Leloir	Argentina	"for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates"
1971	Gerhard Herzberg	Canada	"for his contributions to electronic structure and the geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals"
1972	Christian B. Anfinsen	United States	"for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation"
	Stanford Moore William H. Stein	United States United States	"for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule"
1973	Ernst Otto Fischer Geoffrey Wilkinson	West Germany United Kingdom	"for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so called sandwich compounds"
1974	Paul J. Flory	United States	"for his fundamental work, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules"
1975	John Warcup Cornforth	Australia United Kingdom	"for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions"
	Vladimir Prelog	Croatia / Switzerland	"for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions"
1976	William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr.	United States	"for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding"
1977	Ilya Prigogine	Belgium	"for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures"
1978	Peter D. Mitchell	United Kingdom	"for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory"
1979	Herbert C. Brown Georg Wittig	United States West Germany	"for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into reagents in organic synthesis"
1980	Paul Berg	United States	"for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA"
	Walter Gilbert Frederick Sanger	United States United Kingdom	"for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids"
1981	Kenichi Fukui (福井謙一) Roald Hoffmann	Japan United States	"for their theories concerning the course of chemical reactions"
1982	Aaron Klug	South Africa United Kingdom	"for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes"
1983	Henry Taube	United States	"for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions"
1984	Robert Bruce Merrifield	United States	"for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix"
1985	Herbert A. Hauptman Jerome Karle	United States United States	"for their achievements in developing direct methods for the determination of crystal structures"
1986	Dudley R. Herschbach Yuan T. Lee (李遠哲) John C. Polanyi	United States; Taiwan /United States Canada	"for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes"
1987	Donald J. Cram Jean-Marie Lehn Charles J. Pedersen	United States France United States	"for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity"
1988	Johann Deisenhofer Robert Huber Hartmut Michel	West Germany West Germany West Germany	"for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre"
1989	Sidney Altman Thomas R. Cech	Canada /United States United States	"for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA"
1990	Elias James Corey	United States	"for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis"
1991	Richard R. Ernst	Switzerland	"for his contributions to the development of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy"
1992	Rudolph A. Marcus	United States	"for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems"
1993	Kary B. Mullis	United States	"for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method"
	Michael Smith	Canada	"for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies"
1994	George A. Olah	Hungary United States	"for his contribution to carbocation chemistry"
1995	Paul J. Crutzen Mario J. Molina F. Sherwood Rowland	Netherlands Mexico United States	"for their work in atmospheric chemistry, in particular ozone depletion"
1996	Robert Curl Sir Harold Kroto Richard Smalley	United States United Kingdom United States	"for their discovery of fullerenes"
1997	Paul D. Boyer John E. Walker	United States United Kingdom	"for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate"
	Jens C. Skou	Denmark	"for his discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+/K+-ATPase"
1998	Walter Kohn	United States	"for his development of the density functional theory"
	John A. Pople	United Kingdom	"for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry"
1999	Ahmed H. Zewail	Egypt United States	"for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy" and plastic studies.
2000	Alan J. Heeger Alan G MacDiarmid Hideki Shirakawa (白川英樹)	United States; New Zealand United States; Japan	"for their discovery and development of conductive polymers"
2001	William S. Knowles Ryoji Noyori (野依良治)	United States Japan	"for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions"
	K. Barry Sharpless	United States	"for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions" see Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation
2002	John B. Fenn Koichi Tanaka (田中耕一)	United States Japan	"for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules"
	Kurt Wüthrich	Switzerland	"for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution"
2003	Peter Agre	United States	"for the discovery of water channels"
	Roderick MacKinnon	United States	"for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels"
2004	Aaron Ciechanover Avram Hershko Irwin Rose	Israel Israel United States	"for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation"
2005	Robert Grubbs Richard Schrock Yves Chauvin	United States United States France	"for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis"
2006	Roger D. Kornberg	United States	"for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription"
2007	Gerhard Ertl	Germany	"for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces"

See also

• Nobel laureates by country
• Wolf Prize in Chemistry
• Priestley Medal
• Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

External links

• "All Nobel Laureates in Chemistry" – Index webpage on the official site of the Nobel Foundation.
• "The Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies" – Official hyperlinked webpage of the Nobel Foundation.
• "Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Front and back images of the medal. 1954". "Source: Photo by Eric Arnold. Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. Honors and Awards, 1954h2.1." "All Documents and Media: Pictures and Illustrations", Linus Pauling and The Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History, the Valley Library, Oregon State University. Accessed December 7, 2007.
• "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry" – Official site of the Nobel Foundation.
• "The Nobel Prize Medal for Physics and Chemistry" – Official webpage of the Nobel Foundation.
• "The Nobel Prize Medals and the Medal for the Prize in Economics" – By Birgitta Lemmel; an article on the history of the design of the medals featured on the official site.
• "What the Nobel Laureates Receive" – Featured link in "The Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies".