Chemistry Nobel Prize Winners (1901 to Present)

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist and the inventor of dynamite. Nobel recognized the destructive power of dynamite, but hoped that such power would lead to an end to warfare. However, dynamite was quickly exploited to develop newer, more deadly weapons. Not wanting to be remembered as the "merchant of death", an epitaph given him by a French newspaper in a mistaken obituary, Nobel wrote his will such that it would establish prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." A sixth category, economics, was added in 1969.

First Nobel Awarded in 1901

It took some time to implement Nobel's wishes. The first Nobel prize was awarded in 1901, which was five years after Alfred Nobel's death. Note that the Nobel prize can only be won by individuals, there can be no more than three winners in a given year, and money is split equally between multiple winners. Each winner gets a gold medal, a sum of money, and a diploma.

Nobel Prize Laureates in Chemistry
Year	Laureate	Country	Research
1901	Jacobus H. van't Hoff	Netherlands	Discovered laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions
1902	Emil Hermann Fischer	Germany	Synthetic studies of sugar and purine groups
1903	Svante A. Arrhenius	Sweden	Theory of electrolytic dissociation
1904	Sir William Ramsay	Great Britain	Discovered the noble gases
1905	Adolf von Baeyer	Germany	Organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds
1906	Henri Moissan	France	Studied and isolated the element fluorine
1907	Eduard Buchner	Germany	Biochemical studies, discovered fermentation without cells
1908	Sir Ernest Rutherford	Great Britain	Decay of the elements, chemistry of radioactive substances
1909	Wilhelm Ostwald	Germany	Catalysis, chemical equilibria, and reaction rates
1910	Otto Wallach	Germany	Alicyclic compounds
1911	Marie Curie	Poland-France	Discovered radium and polonium
1912	Victor Grignard Paul Sabatier	France France	Grignard's reagent Hydrogenation of organic compounds in the presence of finely divided metals
1913	Alfred Werner	Switzerland	Bonding relations of atoms in molecules (inorganic chemistry)
1914	Theodore W. Richards	United States	Determined atomic weights
1915	Richard M. Willstätter	Germany	Investigated plant pigments, particularly chlorophyll
1916			The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1917			The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1918	Fritz Haber	Germany	Synthesized ammonia from its elements
1919			The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1920	Walther H. Nernst	Germany	Studies on thermodynamics
1921	Frederick Soddy	Great Britain	Chemistry of radioactive substances, occurrence and nature of the isotopes
1922	Francis William Aston	Great Britain	Discovered several isotopes, mass spectrograph
1923	Fritz Pregl	Austria	Microanalysis of organic compounds
1924			The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
1925	Richard A. Zsigmondy	Germany, Austria	Colloid chemistry (ultramicroscope)
1926	Theodor Svedberg	Sweden	Disperse systems (ultracentrifuge)
1927	Heinrich O. Wieland	Germany	Constitution of bile acids
1928	Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus	Germany	Study of sterols and their relation with vitamins (vitamin D)
1929	Sir Arthur Harden Hans von Euler-Chelpin	Great Britain Sweden, Germany	Studied fermentation of sugars and enzymes
1930	Hans Fischer	Germany	Studied blood and plant pigments, synthesized hemin
1931	Friedrich Bergius Karl Bosch	Germany Germany	Developed chemical high-pressure processes
1932	Irving Langmuir	United States	Surface chemistry
1933			The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1934	Harold Clayton Urey	United States	Discovery of heavy hydrogen (deuterium)
1935	Frederic Joliot-Curie Iréne Joliot-Curie	France France	Syntheses of new radioactive elements (artificial radioactivity)
1936	Peter J. W. Debye	Netherlands, Germany	Studied dipole moments and the diffraction of X rays and electron beams by gases
1937	Walter N. Haworth Paul Karrer	Great Britain Switzerland	Studied carbohydrates and vitamin C Studied carotenoids and flavins and vitamins A and B₂
1938	Richard Kuhn	Germany	Studied carotenoids and vitamins
1939	Adolf F. J. Butenandt Lavoslav Stjepan Ružička	Germany Switzerland	Studies on sexual hormones Studied polymethylenes and higher terpenes
1940			The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
1941			The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1942			The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1943	Georg de Hevesy	Hungary	Application of isotopes as indicators in the investigation of chemical processes
1944	Otto Hahn	Germany	Discovered nuclear fission of atoms
1945	Artturi Ilmari Virtanen	Finland	Discoveries in the area of agricultural and food chemistry, method of preservation of fodder
1946	James B. Sumner John H. Northrop Wendell M. Stanley	United States United States United States	Prepared enzymes and virus proteins in pure form Crystallizability of enzymes
1947	Sir Robert Robinson	Great Britain	Studied alkaloids
1948	Arne W. K. Tiselius	Sweden	Analysis using electrophoresis and adsorption, discoveries concerning serum proteins
1949	William F. Giauque	United States	Contributions to chemical thermodynamics, properties at extremely low temperatures (adiabatic demagnetization)
1950	Kurt Alder Otto P. H. Diels	Germany Germany	Developed diene synthesis
1951	Edwin M. McMillan Glenn T. Seaborg	United States United States	Discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements
1952	Archer J. P. Martin Richard L. M. Synge	Great Britain Great Britain	Invented distribution chromatography
1953	Hermann Staudinger	Germany	Discoveries in the area of macromolecular chemistry
1954	Linus C. Pauling	United States	Studied the nature of the chemical bond (molecular structure of proteins)
1955	Vincent du Vigneaud	United States	Synthesized a polypeptide hormone
1956	Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood Nikolai N. Semenov	Great Britain Soviet Union	Mechanisms of chemical reactions
1957	Sir Alexander R. Todd	Great Britain	Studied nucleotides and their coenzymes
1958	Frederick Sanger	Great Britain	Structure of proteins, especially insulin
1959	Jaroslav Heyrovský	Czech Republic	Polarography
1960	Willard F. Libby	United States	Application of carbon 14 for age determinations (radiocarbon dating)
1961	Melvin Calvin	United States	Studied the assimilation of carbonic acid by plants (photosynthesis)
1962	John C. Kendrew Max F. Perutz	Great Britain Great Britain, Austria	Studied the structures of globulin proteins
1963	Giulio Natta Karl Ziegler	Italy Germany	Chemistry and technology of high polymers
1964	Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin	Great Britain	Structure determination of biologically important substances by means of X rays
1965	Robert B. Woodward	United States	Syntheses of natural products
1966	Robert S. Mulliken	United States	Studied chemical bonds and the electron structure of molecules using the orbital method
1967	Manfred Eigen Ronald G. W. Norrish George Porter	Germany Great Britain Great Britain	Investigated extremely fast chemical reactions
1968	Lars Onsager	United States, Norway	Studied the thermodynamics of irreversible processes
1969	Derek H. R. Barton Odd Hassel	Great Britain Norway	Development of the concept of conformation
1970	Luis F. Leloir	Argentina	Discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates
1971	Gerhard Herzberg	Canada	Electron structure and geometry of molecules, particularly of free radicals (molecular spectroscopy)
1972	Christian B. Anfinsen Stanford Moore William H. Stein	United States United States United States	Studied ribonuclease (Anfinsen) Studied the active center of ribonuclease (Moore & Stein)
1973	Ernst Otto Fischer Geoffrey Wilkinson	Germany Great Britain	Chemistry of metal-organic sandwich compounds
1974	Paul J. Flory	United States	Physical chemistry of macromolecules
1975	John Cornforth Vladimir Prelog	Australia - Great Britain Yugoslavia - Switzerland	Stereochemistry of enzyme catalysis reactions Studied the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions
1976	William N. Lipscomb	United States	Structure of boranes
1977	Ilya Prigogine	Belgium	Contributions to the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, particularly to the theory of dissipative structures
1978	Peter Mitchell	Great Britain	Studied biological energy transfer, development of the chemiosmotic theory
1979	Herbert C. Brown Georg Wittig	United States Germany	Development of (organic) boron and phosphorous compounds
1980	Paul Berg Walter Gilbert Frederick Sanger	United States United States Great Britain	Studied the biochemistry of nucleic acids, particularly hybrid DNA (technology of gene surgery) (Berg) Determined base sequences in nucleic acids (Gilbert & Sanger)
1981	Kenichi Fukui Roald Hoffmann	Japan United States	Theories on the progress of chemical reactions (frontier orbital theory)
1982	Aaron Klug	South Africa	Developed crystallographic methods for the elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid protein complexes
1983	Henry Taube	Canada	Reaction mechanisms of electron transfer, especially with metal complexes
1984	Robert Bruce Merrifield	United States	Method for the preparation of peptides and proteins
1985	Herbert A. Hauptman Jerome Karle	United States United States	Developed direct methods for the determination of crystal structures
1986	Dudley R. Herschbach Yuan T. Lee John C. Polanyi	United States United States Canada	Dynamics of chemical elementary processes
1987	Donald James Cram Charles J. Pedersen Jean-Marie Lehn	United States United States France	Development of molecules with structurally specific interaction of high selectivity
1988	Johann Deisenhofer Robert Huber Hartmut Michel	Germany Germany Germany	Determined the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction center
1989	Thomas Robert Cech Sidney Altman	United States United States	Discovered the catalytic properties of ribonucleic acid (RNA)
1990	Elias James Corey	United States	Developed novel methods for the synthesis of complex natural compounds (retrosynthetic analysis)
1991	Richard R. Ernst	Switzerland	Developed high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR)
1992	Rudolph A. Marcus	Canada - United States	Theories of electron transfer
1993	Kary B. Mullis Michael Smith	United States Great Britain - Canada	Invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) Development of site specific mutagenesis
1994	George A. Olah	United States	Carbocations
1995	Paul Crutzen Mario Molina F. Sherwood Rowland	Netherlands Mexico - United States United States	Work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone
1996	Harold W. Kroto Robert F. Curl, Jr. Richard E. Smalley	Great Britain United States United States	Discovered fullerenes
1997	Paul Delos Boyer John E. Walker Jens C. Skou	United States Great Britain Denmark	Elucidated the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na⁺, K⁺-ATPase
1998	Walter Kohn John A. Pople	United States Great Britain	Development of the density-functional theory (Kohn) Development of computational methods in quantum chemistry (GAUSSIAN computer programs) (Pope)
1999	Ahmed H. Zewail	Egypt - United States	Studied the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy
2000	Alan J. Heeger Alan G. MacDiarmid Hideki Shirakawa	United States United States Japan	Discovered and developed conductive polymers
2001	William S. Knowles Ryoji Noyori Karl Barry Sharpless	United States Japan United States	Work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions (Knowles & Noyori) Work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions (Sharpless)
2002	John Bennett Fenn Jokichi Takamine Kurt Wüthrich	United States Japan Switzerland	Developed soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules (Fenn & Tanaka) Developed nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution (Wüthrich)
2003	Peter Agre Roderick MacKinnon	United States United States	Discovered water channels for transport of water in cell membranes Performed structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels in cells
2004	Aaron Ciechanover Avaram Hershko Irwin Rose	Israel Israel United States	Discovered and elucidated the process of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
2005	Yves Chauvin Robert H. Grubbs Richard R. Schrock	France United States United States	Developed the metathesis method of organic synthesis, allowing for advances in 'green' chemistry
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"
2008	Shimomura Osamu Martin Chalfie Roger Y. Tsien	United States	"for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP"
2009	Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Thomas A. Steitz Ada E. Yonath	United Kingdom United States Isreal	"for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"
2010	Ei-ichi Negishi Akira Suzuki Richard Heck	Japan Japan United States	"for the development of palladium-catalyzed cross coupling"
2011	Daniel Shechtman	Israel	"for the discovery of quasi-crystals"
2012	Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka	United States	"for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"
2013	Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, Arieh Warshel	United States	"for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems"
2014	Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, William E. Moerner (USA)	United States, Germany, United States	“for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”
2016	Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, Bernard L. Feringa	France, United States, Netherlands	“for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”
2017	Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, Richard Henderson	Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom	“for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution”

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Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "Nobel Prize in Chemistry." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/chemistry-nobel-prize-winners-608597. Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. (2023, April 5). Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/chemistry-nobel-prize-winners-608597 Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "Nobel Prize in Chemistry." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/chemistry-nobel-prize-winners-608597 (accessed May 9, 2025).