Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry since 1901 and upto till date

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the field of chemistry. It has been awarded since 1901 and recognizes discoveries that have deepened our understanding of chemical processes and advanced science and technology.

Key Aspects of the Prize

• It covers areas like organic chemistry, biochemistry, physical chemistry, and materials science.

• Some discoveries have led to life-saving medicines, new materials, and environmental solutions.

• Many Chemistry Nobel Prizes are related to medicine, biology, and physics, showing the connections between scientific fields.

Famous Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry

• Marie Curie (1911) – Discovery of radium and polonium, work on radioactivity.

• Linus Pauling (1954) – Research on the nature of chemical bonds.

• Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1964) – X-ray crystallography of biomolecules, including vitamin B12 and penicillin.

• Ahmed Zewail (1999) – Development of femtochemistry (study of chemical reactions on extremely short timescales).

• Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, Akira Suzuki (2010) – Development of palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling in organic synthesis.

• Frances H. Arnold (2018) – Directed evolution of enzymes for bioengineering applications.

• Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer Doudna (2020) – Development of CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology.

• K. Barry Sharpless (2001 & 2022) – Pioneering work in click chemistry; one of the few to win twice in Chemistry.

Let's see the list of all Nobel Laureates in Chemistry

Year	Laureate(s)	Contribution
1901	Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff	for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions
1902	Hermann Emil Fischer	for his work on sugar and purine syntheses
1903	Svante Arrhenius	for his electrolytic theory of dissociation
1904	William Ramsay	for his discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system
1905	Adolf von Baeyer	for his services in the advancement of organic chemistry and the chemical industry, through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds
1906	Henri Moissan	for his investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, and for the electric furnace called after him
1907	Eduard Buchner	for his biochemical research and his discovery of cell-free fermentation
1908	Ernest Rutherford	for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances
1909	Wilhelm Ostwald	for his work on catalysis and for his investigations into chemical equilibria and reaction velocities
1910	Otto Wallach	for his work in the field of alicyclic compounds
1911	Marie Curie	for 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
1912	Victor Grignard	for the discovery of the so-called Grignard reagent, which in recent years has greatly advanced organic chemistry
1912	Paul Sabatier	for his method of hydrogenating organic compounds in the presence of finely divided metals, whereby the progress of organic chemistry has been greatly advanced in recent years
1913	Alfred Werner	for his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules, particularly in inorganic chemistry
1914	Theodore William Richards	for his accurate determinations of the atomic weights of a large number of chemical elements
1915	Richard Willstätter	for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll
1916	Not awarded	-
1917	Not awarded	-
1918	Fritz Haber	for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements
1919	Not awarded	-
1920	Walther Hermann Nernst	for his work in thermochemistry
1921	Frederick Soddy	for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes
1922	Francis W. Aston	Discovery of isotopes in non-radioactive elements and enunciation of the whole-number rule
1923	Fritz Pregl	Invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances
1924	No Prize Awarded	Prize money allocated to the Special Fund
1925	Richard Zsigmondy	Demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and fundamental methods in colloid chemistry
1926	The Svedberg	Work on disperse systems
1927	Heinrich Wieland	Investigations on the constitution of bile acids and related substances
1928	Adolf Windaus	Research on sterols and their connection with vitamins
1929	Arthur Harden, Hans von Euler-Chelpin	Investigations on sugar fermentation and fermentative enzymes
1930	Hans Fischer	for his research on hemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of hemin
1931	Carl Bosch, Friedrich Bergius	for their contributions to high-pressure chemistry
1932	Irving Langmuir	for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry
1933	Not awarded	-
1934	Harold Clayton Urey	for his discovery of heavy hydrogen (deuterium)
1935	Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Irène Joliot-Curie	for their synthesis of new radioactive elements
1936	Petrus (Peter) Debye	for his contributions to molecular structure determination through dipole moments and X-ray and electron diffraction analysis
1937	Walter Norman Haworth	for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C
1937	Paul Karrer	for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins, and vitamins A and B2
1938	Richard Kuhn	for his work on carotenoids and vitamins (refused award)
1939	Adolf Butenandt	for his work on sex hormones (refused award)
1939	Leopold Ružicka	for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes
1940	Not awarded	-
1941	Not awarded	-
1942	Not awarded	-
1943	George de Hevesy	for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes
1944	Otto Hahn	for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei
1945	Artturi Ilmari Virtanen	for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method
1946	James B. Sumner	for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized
1946	John Howard Northrop, Wendell Meredith Stanley	for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form
1947	Sir Robert Robinson	for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids
1948	Arne Tiselius	for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of serum proteins
1949	William Giauque	for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behavior of substances at extremely low temperatures
1950	Otto Diels, Kurt Alder	for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis
1951	Edwin McMillan, Glenn T. Seaborg	for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements
1952	Archer John Porter Martin, Richard Laurence Millington Synge	for their invention of partition chromatography
1953	Hermann Staudinger	for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry
1954	Linus Pauling	for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances
1955	Vincent du Vigneaud	for his work on biochemically important sulfur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone
1956	Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Nikolay Semenov	for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions
1957	Lord Alexander R. Todd	for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes
1958	Frederick Sanger	for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin
1959	Jaroslav Heyrovský	for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis
1960	Willard Libby	for his method of using carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science
1961	Melvin Calvin	for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants
1962	Max Perutz, John Kendrew	for their studies of the structures of globular proteins
1963	Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta	for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers
1964	Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin	for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances
1965	Robert Burns Woodward	for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis
1966	Robert S. Mulliken	for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method
1967	Manfred Eigen, Ronald Norrish, George Porter	for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by very short pulses of energy
1968	Lars Onsager	for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes
1969	Derek Barton, Odd Hassel	for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry
1970	Luis Federico Leloir	for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates
1971	Gerhard Herzberg	for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals
1972	Christian B. Anfinsen	for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between amino acid sequence and biologically active conformation
1972	Stanford Moore, William H. Stein	for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active center of ribonuclease
1973	Ernst Otto Fischer, Geoffrey Wilkinson	for their pioneering work on the chemistry of the organometallic sandwich compounds
1974	Paul J. Flory	for his fundamental achievements in the physical chemistry of macromolecules
1975	John Cornforth	for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions
1975	Vladimir Prelog	for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions
1976	William N. Lipscomb	for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding
1977	Ilya Prigogine	for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures
1978	Peter D. Mitchell	for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory
1979	Herbert C. Brown, Georg Wittig	for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds in important reagents in organic synthesis
1980	Paul Berg	for studies on the biochemistry of nucleic acids, particularly recombinant DNA
1980	Walter Gilbert, Frederick Sanger	for their contributions to determining base sequences in nucleic acids
1981	Kenichi Fukui, Roald Hoffmann	for their theories on the course of chemical reactions
1982	Aaron Klug	for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy
1983	Henry Taube	for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions
1984	Bruce Merrifield	for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix
1985	Herbert A. Hauptman, Jerome Karle	for their development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures
1986	Dudley R. Herschbach, Yuan T. Lee, John C. Polanyi	for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes
1987	Donald J. Cram, Jean-Marie Lehn, Charles J. Pedersen	for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity
1988	Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber, Hartmut Michel	for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre
1989	Sidney Altman, Thomas R. Cech	for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA
1990	Elias James Corey	for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis
1991	Richard R. Ernst	for his contributions to high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy
1992	Rudolph A. Marcus	for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions
1993	Kary B. Mullis	for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method
1993	Michael Smith	for his contributions to site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies
1994	George A. Olah	for his contribution to carbocation chemistry
1995	Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, F. Sherwood Rowland	for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning ozone
1996	Robert F. Curl Jr., Sir Harold Kroto, Richard E. Smalley	for their discovery of fullerenes
1997	Paul D. Boyer, John E. Walker	for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying ATP synthesis
1997	Jens C. Skou	for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase
1998	Walter Kohn	for his development of the density-functional theory
1998	John Pople	for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry
1999	Ahmed Zewail	for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy
2000	Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid, Hideki Shirakawa	for the discovery and development of conductive polymers
2001	William Knowles, Ryoji Noyori	for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions
2001	K. Barry Sharpless	for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions
2002	John B. Fenn, Koichi Tanaka	for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules
2002	Kurt Wüthrich	for his development of NMR spectroscopy for determining the structure of biological macromolecules
2003	Peter Agre	for the discovery of water channels
2003	Roderick MacKinnon	for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels
2004	Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Irwin Rose	for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
2005	Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs, Richard R. Schrock	for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis
2006	Roger D. Kornberg	for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription
2007	Gerhard Ertl	for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces
2008	Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, Roger Y. Tsien	for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP
2009	Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz, Ada E. Yonath	for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome
2010	Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, Akira Suzuki	for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis
2011	Dan Shechtman	for the discovery of quasicrystals
2012	Robert J. Lefkowitz, Brian Kobilka	for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors
2013	Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, Arieh Warshel	for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems
2014	Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, William E. Moerner	for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy
2015	Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, Aziz Sancar	for mechanistic studies of DNA repair
2016	Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, Bernard L. Feringa	for the design and synthesis of molecular machines
2017	Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, Richard Henderson	for developing cryo-electron microscopy for high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution
2018	Frances H. Arnold	for the directed evolution of enzymes
2018	George P. Smith, Sir Gregory P. Winter	for the phage display of peptides and antibodies
2019	John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, Akira Yoshino	for the development of lithium-ion batteries
2020	Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer A. Doudna	for the development of a method for genome editing
2021	Benjamin List, David W.C. MacMillan	for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis
2022	Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, K. Barry Sharpless	for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry
2023	Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, Aleksey Yekimov	for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots
2024	David Baker	for computational protein design
2024	Demis Hassabis, John Jumper	for protein structure prediction

 

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