Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Nobel chemistry
Physics | Chemistry | Physiology or Medicine
Economic Sciences | Literature | Peace
Year | Awardee(s) |
---|---|
2021 |
Awarded to: Benjamin List and David MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis. |
2020 |
Awarded to: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing. |
2019 |
Awarded to: John B. Goodenough (AccessScience contributor: Electric insulator), M. Stanley Whittingham (AccessScience contributor: Solid-state battery), and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries. |
2018 |
Awarded with one half to: Frances H. Arnold, for the directed evolution of enzymes, and the other half jointly to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter for the phage display of peptides and antibodies. |
2017 |
Awarded to: Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. |
2016 |
Awarded to: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. |
2015 |
Awarded to: Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. |
2014 |
Awarded jointly to: Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. |
2013 |
Awarded jointly to: Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems. |
2012 |
Awarded jointly to: Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors. |
2011 |
Awarded to: Dan Shechtman (AccessScience contributor: Quasicrystal) for the discovery of quasicrystals. |
2010 |
Awarded jointly to: Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki for the development of palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis. |
2009 |
Awarded jointly to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome. |
2008 |
Awarded jointly to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. |
2007 |
Awarded to: Gerhard Ertl for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces. |
2006 |
Awarded to: Roger D. Kornberg for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription. |
2005 |
Awarded jointly to Robert H. Grubbs, Richard R. Schrock, and Yves Chauvin for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis. |
2004 |
Awarded jointly to: Avram Hershko, Irwin Rose, and Aaron Ciechanover (AccessScience contributor: Protein degradation) for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. |
2003 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded to: Peter Agre for his discovery of a protein that serves as the channel for water transport through cell membranes. |
and with one half to: Roderick MacKinnon for his structural and mechanistic studies of channels subserving ion transport through cell membranes. |
|
2002 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded jointly to: Koichi Tanaka and John B. Fenn for their development of soft desorption ionization methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules. |
and with one half to: Kurt Wüthrich for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution. |
|
2001 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded jointly to: Ryoji Noyori and William S. Knowles for their work on chirally catalyzed hydrogen reactions. |
and with one half to: K. Barry Sharpless for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions. |
|
2000 |
Awarded jointly to Alan G. MacDiarmid, Hideki Shirakawa, and Alan J. Heeger for the discovery and development of conductive polymers. |
1999 |
Awarded to: Ahmed H. Zewail for his pioneering investigation of fundamental chemical reactions using ultra-short laser flashes (femtosecond spectroscopy). |
1998 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Walter Kohn for his development of the density-functional theory. |
and John A. Pople for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry. |
|
1997 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded jointly to: Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). |
and with one half to: Jens C. Skou for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase. |
|
1996 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Robert F. Curl, Jr., Sir Harold W. Kroto (AccessScience contributor: Fullerene), and Richard E. Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes. |
1995 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone. |
1994 |
Awarded to: George A. Olah for his contribution to carbocation chemistry. |
1993 |
The prize was awarded for contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry, and was divided equally between: Kary B. Mullis for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. |
and Michael Smith for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies. |
|
1992 |
Awarded to: Rudolph A. Marcus for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems. |
1991 |
Awarded to: Richard R. Ernst for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. |
1990 |
Awarded to: Elias James Corey for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis. |
1989 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Sidney Altman and Thomas R. Cech for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA. |
1988 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber, and Hartmut Michel for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction center. |
1987 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Jean-Marie Lehn (AccessScience contributor: Supramolecular chemistry), Charles J. Pedersen, and Donald J. Cram for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity. |
1986 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Dudley R. Herschbach, Yuan T. Lee, and John C. Polanyi for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes. |
1985 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures. |
1984 |
Awarded to: Robert Bruce Merrifield for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix. |
1983 |
Awarded to: Henry Taube (AccessScience contributor: Oxidation-reduction) for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes. |
1982 |
Awarded to: Sir Aaron Klug for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nuclei acid-protein complexes. |
1981 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Roald Hoffmann and Kenichi Fukui for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions. |
1980 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded to: Paul Berg for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA. |
and the other half jointly to: Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids. |
|
1979 |
The prize was divided equally between: Herbert C. Brown (AccessScience contributor: Hydroboration) and Georg Wittig for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis. |
1978 |
Awarded to: Peter D. Mitchell for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory. |
1977 |
Awarded to: Ilya Prigogine for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures. |
1976 |
Awarded to: William N. Lipscomb for his studies on the structure of boranes, illuminating problems of chemical bonding. |
1975 |
The prize was divided equally between: Sir John Warcup Cornforth for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. |
and Vladimir Prelog for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions. |
|
1974 |
Awarded to: Paul J. Flory for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of the macromolecules. |
1973 |
The prize was divided equally between: Ernst Otto Fischer and Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so-called sandwich compounds. |
1972 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded to: Christian B. Anfinsen for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active confirmation. |
and the other half jointly to: William H. Stein and Stanford Moore for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active center of the ribonuclease molecule. |
|
1971 |
Awarded to: Gerhard Herzberg for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals. |
1970 |
Awarded to: Luis F. Leloir for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates. |
1969 |
The prize was divided equally between: Sir Derek H. R. Barton and Odd Hassel for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry. |
1968 |
Awarded to: Lars Onsager for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. |
1967 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded to: Manfred Eigen. |
and the other half jointly to: Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and Lord (George) Porter for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy. |
|
1966 |
Awarded to: Robert S. Mulliken (AccessScience contributor: Molecular structure and spectra) for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method. |
1965 |
Awarded to: Robert Burns Woodward for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis. |
1964 |
Awarded to: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances. |
1963 |
The prize was divided equally between: Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers. |
1962 |
The prize was divided equally between: Sir John Cowdery Kendrew and Max Ferdinand Perutz for their studies of the structures of globular proteins. |
1961 |
Awarded to: Melvin Calvin for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants. |
1960 |
Awarded to: Willard Frank Libby for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science. |
1959 |
Awarded to: Jaroslav Heyrovský for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis. |
1958 |
Awarded to: Frederick Sanger for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin. |
1957 |
Awarded to: Lord Alexander R. Todd for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes. |
1956 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood and Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions. |
1955 |
Awarded to: Vincent Du Vigneaud for his work on biochemically important sulfur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone. |
1954 |
Awarded to: Linus Carl Pauling for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances. |
1953 |
Awarded to: Hermann Staudinger for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry. |
1952 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Archer John Porter Martin and Richard Laurence Millington Synge for their invention of partition chromatography. |
1951 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Edwin Mattison McMillan and Glenn Theodore Seaborg (AccessScience contributor: Transuranium elements, Einsteinium, Actinide elements, Seaborgium, Mendelevium, Fermium, Berkelium, Curium, Californium) for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements. |
1950 |
The prize as awarded jointly to: Otto Paul Hermann Diels and Kurt Alder for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis. |
1949 |
Awarded to: William Francis Giauque for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behavior of substances at extremely low temperatures. |
1948 |
Awarded to: Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins. |
1947 |
Awarded to: Sir Robert Robinson for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids. |
1946 |
The prize was divided, with one half awarded to: James Batcheller Sumner for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized. |
and the other half jointly to John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form. |
|
1945 |
Awarded to: Artturi Ilmari Virtanen for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method. |
1944 |
Awarded to: Otto Hahn for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei. |
1943 |
Awarded to: George von Hevesy for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes. |
1942 |
No prize awarded. |
1941 |
No prize awarded. |
1940 |
No prize awarded. |
1939 |
Awarded to: Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt for his work on sex hormones (caused by the authorities of his country to decline the award but later received the diploma and the medal). |
and Leopold Ruzicka for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes. |
|
1938 |
Awarded to: Richard Kuhn for his work on carotenoids and vitamins. (caused by the authorities of his country to decline the award but later received the diploma and the medal). |
1937 |
The prize was divided equally between: Sir Walter Norman Haworth for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C. |
and Paul Karrer for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B-2. |
|
1936 |
Awarded to: Petrus (Peter) Josephus Wilhelmus Debye 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 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements. |
1934 |
Awarded to: Harold Clayton Urey for his discovery of heavy hydrogen. |
1932 |
Awarded to: Irving Langmuir for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry. |
1931 |
The prize was awarded jointly to: Karl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in recognition of their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high-pressure methods. |
1930 |
Awarded to: Hans Fischer for his researches into the constitution of hemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of hemin. |
1929 |
The prize was divided equally between: Sir Arthur Harden and Hans Karl August Simon Von Euler-Chelpin for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes. |
1928 |
Awarded to: Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins. |
1927 |
Awarded to: Heinrich Otto Wieland for his investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances. |
1926 |
Awarded to: The (Theodor) Svedberg for his work on disperse systems. |
1925 |
Awarded to: Richard Adolf Zsigmondy for his demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid chemistry. |
1923 |
Awarded to: Fritz Pregl for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances. |
1922 |
Awarded to: Francis William Aston 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 |
Awarded to: Frederick Soddy for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes. |
1920 |
Awarded to: Walther Hermann Nernst in recognition of his work in thermochemistry. |
1919 |
The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section. |
1918 |
Awarded to: Fritz Haber for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements. |
1917 |
The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section. |
1916 |
The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section. |
1915 |
Awarded to: Richard Martin Willstätter for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll. |
1914 |
Awarded to: Theodore William Richards in recognition of his accurate determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements. |
1913 |
Awarded to: Alfred Werner 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 |
The prize was divided equally between: Victor Grignard for the discovery of the so-called Grignard reagent, which in recent years has greatly advanced the progress of organic chemistry. |
and: Paul Sabatier 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 |
Awarded to: Marie Curie née Marie Sklodowska 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 |
Awarded to: Otto Wallach in recognition of his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his pioneer work in the field of alicyclic compounds. |
1909 |
Awarded to: Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald in recognition of his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction. |
1908 |
Awarded to: Lord Ernest Rutherford for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances. |
1907 |
Awarded to: Eduard Buchner for his biochemical researches and his discovery of cellfree fermentation. |
1906 |
Awarded to: Henri Moissan 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 |
Awarded to: Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf Von Baeyer 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 |
Awarded to: Sir William Ramsay 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 |
Awarded to: Svante August Arrhenius in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation. |
1902 |
Awarded to: Hermann Emil Fischer in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses. |
1901 |
Awarded to: Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions. |