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 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896. These prizes are awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine.[1] As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[2] The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, of the Netherlands. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years.[3] In 1901, van 't Hoff received 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death.[4]
At least 25 laureates have received the Nobel Prize for contributions in the field of organic chemistry, more than any other field of chemistry.[5] Two Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry, Germans Richard Kuhn (1938) and Adolf Butenandt (1939), were not allowed by their government to accept the prize. They would later receive a medal and diploma, but not the money. Frederick Sanger is one out of three laureates to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice in the same subject, in 1958 and 1980. John Bardeen, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 and 1972, and Karl Barry Sharpless, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2001 and 2022, are the others. Two others have won Nobel Prizes twice, one in chemistry and one in another subject: Maria Skłodowska-Curie (physics in 1903, chemistry in 1911) and Linus Pauling (chemistry in 1954, peace in 1962).[6] As of 2023, the prize has been awarded to 192 individuals, including eight women (Maria Skłodowska-Curie being the first to be awarded in 1911).[7]
There have been eight years for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was not awarded (1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940–42). There were also nine years for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was delayed for one year. The Prize was not awarded in 1914, as the Nobel Committee for Chemistry decided that none of that year's nominations met the necessary criteria, but was awarded to Theodore William Richards in 1915 and counted as the 1914 prize. This precedent was followed for the 1918 prize awarded to Fritz Haber in 1919, the 1920 prize awarded to Walther Nernst in 1921, the 1921 prize awarded to Frederick Soddy in 1922, the 1925 prize awarded to Richard Zsigmondy in 1926, the 1927 prize awarded to Heinrich Otto Wieland in 1928, the 1938 prize awarded to Richard Kuhn in 1939, the 1943 prize awarded to George de Hevesy in 1944, and the 1944 prize awarded to Otto Hahn in 1945.
In 2020, Ioannidis et al. reported that half of the Nobel Prizes for science awarded between 1995 and 2017 were clustered in just a few disciplines within their broader fields. Atomic physics, particle physics, cell biology, and neuroscience dominated the two subjects outside chemistry, while molecular chemistry was the chief prize-winning discipline in its domain. Molecular chemists won 5.3% of all science Nobel Prizes during this period.[8]
| scope=col | Year | scope=col class=unsortable | Image | scope=col | Laureate | scope=col style="width: 100pt;" | Country | scope=col class=unsortable | Rationale | scope=col class=unsortable | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1901 | scope=row data-sort-value="Van 't Hoff, Jacobus" | Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (1852–1911) |  Netherlands | "[for his] discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions" | [9] | ||||||
| 1902 | scope=row data-sort-value="Fischer, Hermann" | Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919) | "[for] his work on sugar and purine syntheses" | [10] | |||||||
| 1903 | scope=row data-sort-value="Arrhenius, Svante" | Svante August Arrhenius (1859–1927) |  Sweden | "[for] his electrolytic theory of dissociation" | [11] | ||||||
| 1904 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ramsay, William" | Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916) |  United Kingdom | "[for his] discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system" | [12] | ||||||
| 1905 | scope=row data-sort-value="Von Baeyer, Adolf" | Adolf von Baeyer (1835–1917) | "[for] the advancement of organic chemistry and the chemical industry, through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds" | [13] | |||||||
| 1906 | scope=row data-sort-value="Moissan, Henri" | Henri Moissan (1852–1907) |  France | "[for his] investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, and for [the] electric furnace called after him" | [14] | ||||||
| 1907 | scope=row data-sort-value="Buchner, Eduard" | Eduard Buchner (1860–1917) | "for his biochemical researches and his discovery of cell-free fermentation" | [15] | |||||||
| 1908 | scope=row data-sort-value="Rutherford, Ernest" | Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) | United Kingdom New Zealand | "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances" | [16] | ||||||
| 1909 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ostwald, Wilhelm" | Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) | "[for] his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction" | [17] | |||||||
| 1910 | scope=row data-sort-value="Wallach, Otto" | Otto Wallach (1847–1931) | "[for] his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his pioneer work in the field of alicyclic compounds" | [18] | |||||||
| 1911 | scope=row data-sort-value="Curie, Marie" | Marie Curie, née Skłodowska (1867–1934) | data-sort-value="Russian Empire" | Poland France | "[for] 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" | [19] | |||||
| 1912 | scope=row data-sort-value="Grignard, Victor" | Victor Grignard (1871–1935) | France | "for the discovery of the [...] Grignard reagent" | [20] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Sabatier, Paul" | Paul Sabatier (1854–1941) | France | "for his method of hydrogenating organic compounds in the presence of finely disintegrated metals" | ||||||||
| 1913 | scope=row data-sort-value="Werner, Alfred" | Alfred Werner (1866–1919) |  Switzerland | "[for] his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules [...] especially in inorganic chemistry" | [21] | ||||||
| 1914 | scope=row data-sort-value="Richards, Theodore" | Theodore William Richards (1868–1928) |  United States | "[for] his accurate determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements" | [22] | ||||||
| 1915 | scope=row data-sort-value="Willstatter, Richard" | Richard Martin Willstätter (1872–1942) | "for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll" | [23] | |||||||
| 1916 | Not awarded | ||||||||||
| 1917 | |||||||||||
| 1918 | scope=row data-sort-value="Haber, Fritz" | Fritz Haber (1868–1934) | "for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements" | [24] | |||||||
| 1919 | Not awarded | ||||||||||
| 1920 | scope=row data-sort-value="Nernst, Walther" | Walther Hermann Nernst (1864–1941) | "[for] his work in thermochemistry" | [25] | |||||||
| 1921 | scope=row data-sort-value="Soddy, Frederick" | Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) | United Kingdom | "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes" | [26] | ||||||
| 1922 | scope=row data-sort-value="Aston, Francis" | Francis William Aston (1877–1945) | United Kingdom | "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" | [27] | ||||||
| 1923 | scope=row data-sort-value="Pregl, Fritz" | Fritz Pregl (1869–1930) |  Austria | "for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances" | [28] | ||||||
| 1924 | Not awarded | ||||||||||
| 1925 | scope=row data-sort-value="Zsigmondy, Richard" | Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (1865–1929) |  Hungary | "for his demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used" | [29] | ||||||
| 1926 | scope=row data-sort-value="Svedberg, Theodor" | The (Theodor) Svedberg (1884–1971) | Sweden | "for his work on disperse systems" | [30] | ||||||
| 1927 | scope=row data-sort-value="Wieland, Heinrich" | Heinrich Otto Wieland (1877–1957) | "for his investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances" | [31] | |||||||
| 1928 | scope=row data-sort-value="Windaus, Adolf" | Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (1876–1959) | "[for] his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins" | [32] | |||||||
| 1929 | scope=row data-sort-value="Harden, Arthur" | Arthur Harden (1865–1940) | United Kingdom | "for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes" | [33] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Von Euler-Chelpin, Hans" | Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin (1873–1964) | Sweden | |||||||||
| 1930 | scope=row data-sort-value="Fischer, Hans" | Hans Fischer (1881–1945) | "for his researches into the constitution of haemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of haemin" | [34] | |||||||
| 1931 | scope=row data-sort-value="Bosch, Carl" | Carl Bosch (1874–1940) | "[for] their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods" | [35] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Bergius, Friedrich" | Friedrich Bergius (1884–1949) | ||||||||||
| 1932 | scope=row data-sort-value="Langmuir, Irving" | Irving Langmuir (1881–1957) | United States | "for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry" | [36] | ||||||
| 1933 | Not awarded | ||||||||||
| 1934 | scope=row data-sort-value="Urey, Harold" | Harold Clayton Urey (1893–1981) | United States | "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen" | [37] | ||||||
| 1935 | scope=row data-sort-value="Joliot, Frederic" | Frédéric Joliot (1900–1958) | France | "[for] their synthesis of new radioactive elements" | [38] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Joliot-Curie, Irene" | Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956) | France | |||||||||
| 1936 | scope=row data-sort-value="Debye, Peter" | Peter Debye (1884–1966) | Netherlands | "[for his work on] molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments and the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases" | [39] | ||||||
| 1937 | scope=row data-sort-value="Haworth, Norman" | Walter Norman Haworth (1883–1950) | United Kingdom | "for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C" | [40] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Karrer, Paul" | Paul Karrer (1889–1971) | Switzerland | "for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2" | ||||||||
| 1938 | scope=row data-sort-value="Kuhn, Richard" | Richard Kuhn (1900–1967) | "for his work on carotenoids and vitamins" | [41] | |||||||
| 1939 | scope=row data-sort-value="Butenandt, Adolf" | Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt (1903–1995) | "for his work on sex hormones" | [42] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Ruzicka, Leopold" | Leopold Ružička (1887–1976) | Switzerland | "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes" | ||||||||
| 1940 | Not awarded | ||||||||||
| 1941 | |||||||||||
| 1942 | |||||||||||
| 1943 | scope=row data-sort-value="De Hevesy, George" | George de Hevesy (1885–1966) | "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes" | [43] | |||||||
| 1944 | scope=row data-sort-value="Hahn, Otto" | Otto Hahn (1879–1968) | "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei" | [44] | |||||||
| 1945 | scope=row data-sort-value="Virtanen, Artturi" | Artturi Ilmari Virtanen (1895–1973) |  Finland | "for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method" | [45] | ||||||
| 1946 | scope=row data-sort-value="Sumner, James" | James Batcheller Sumner (1887–1955) | United States | "for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized" | [46] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Northrop, John" | John Howard Northrop (1891–1987) | United States | "for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form" | ||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Stanley, Wendell" | Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904–1971) | United States | |||||||||
| 1947 | scope=row data-sort-value="Robinson, Robert" | Sir Robert Robinson (1886–1975) | United Kingdom | "for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids" | [47] | ||||||
| 1948 | scope=row data-sort-value="Tiselius, Arne" | Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius (1902–1971) | Sweden | "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins" | [48] | ||||||
| 1949 | scope=row data-sort-value="Giauque, William" | William Francis Giauque (1895–1982) | United States | "for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures" | [49] | ||||||
| 1950 | scope=row data-sort-value="Diels, Otto" | Otto Paul Hermann Diels (1876–1954) | "for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis" | [50] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Alder, Kurt" | Kurt Alder (1902–1958) | ||||||||||
| 1951 | scope=row data-sort-value="McMillan, Edwin" | Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907–1991) | United States | "for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements" | [51] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Seaborg, Glenn" | Glenn Theodore Seaborg (1912–1999) | United States | |||||||||
| 1952 | scope=row data-sort-value="Martin, Archer" | Archer John Porter Martin (1910–2002) | United Kingdom | "for their invention of partition chromatography" | [52] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Synge, Richard" | Richard Laurence Millington Synge (1914–1994) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 1953 | scope=row data-sort-value="Staudinger, Hermann" | Hermann Staudinger (1881–1965) | "for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry" | [53] | |||||||
| 1954 | scope=row data-sort-value="Pauling, Linus" | Linus Pauling (1901–1994) | United States | "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances" | [54] | ||||||
| 1955 | scope=row data-sort-value="Du Vigneaud, Vincent" | Vincent du Vigneaud (1901–1978) | United States | "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone" | [55] | ||||||
| 1956 | scope=row data-sort-value="Hinshelwood, Cyril" | Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (1897–1967) | United Kingdom | "for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions" | [56] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Semyonov, Nikolay" | Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov (1896–1986) | ||||||||||
| 1957 | scope=row data-sort-value="Todd, Alexander" | Lord (Alexander R.) Todd (1907–1997) | United Kingdom | "for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes" | [57] | ||||||
| 1958 | scope=row data-sort-value="Sanger, Frederick" | Frederick Sanger (1918–2013) | United Kingdom | "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin" | [58] | ||||||
| 1959 | scope=row data-sort-value="Heyrovsky, Jaroslav" | Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890–1967) | "for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis" | [59] | |||||||
| 1960 | scope=row data-sort-value="Libby, Willard" | Willard Frank Libby (1908–1980) | United States | "for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science" | [60] | ||||||
| 1961 | scope=row data-sort-value="Calvin, Melvin" | Melvin Calvin (1911–1997) | United States | "for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants" | [61] | ||||||
| 1962 | scope=row data-sort-value="Perutz, Max" | Max Ferdinand Perutz (1914–2002) | United Kingdom | "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins" | [62] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Kendrew, John" | John Cowdery Kendrew (1917–1997) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 1963 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ziegler, Karl" | Karl Ziegler (1898–1973) | "for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers" | [63] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Natta, Giulio" | Giulio Natta (1903–1979) |  Italy | |||||||||
| 1964 | scope=row data-sort-value="Hodgkin, Dorothy" | Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994) | United Kingdom | "for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances" | [64] | ||||||
| 1965 | scope=row data-sort-value="Woodward, Robert" | Robert Burns Woodward (1917–1979) | United States | "for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis" | [65] | ||||||
| 1966 | scope=row data-sort-value="Mulliken, Robert" | Robert S. Mulliken (1896–1986) | United States | "for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method" | [66] | ||||||
| 1967 | scope=row data-sort-value="Eigen, Manfred" | Manfred Eigen (1927–2019) | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" | [67] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Norrish, Ronald" | Ronald George Wreyford Norrish (1897–1978) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Porter, George" | George Porter (1920–2002) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 1968 | scope=row data-sort-value="Onsager, Lars" | Lars Onsager (1903–1976) | United States Norway | "for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes" | [68] | ||||||
| 1969 | scope=row data-sort-value="Barton, Derek" | Derek H. R. Barton (1918–1998) | United Kingdom | "for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry" | [69] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Hassel, Odd" | Odd Hassel (1897–1981) | Norway | |||||||||
| 1970 | scope=row data-sort-value="Leloir, Luis" | Luis F. Leloir (1906–1987) |  Argentina | "for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates" | [70] | ||||||
| 1971 | scope=row data-sort-value="Herzberg, Gerhard" | Gerhard Herzberg (1904–1999) |  Canada | "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals" | [71] | ||||||
| 1972 | scope=row data-sort-value="Anfinsen, Christian" | Christian B. Anfinsen (1916–1995) | United States | "for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation" | [72] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Moore, Stanford" | Stanford Moore (1913–1982) | 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" | ||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Stein, William" | William H. Stein (1911–1980) | United States | |||||||||
| 1973 | scope=row data-sort-value="Fischer, Ernst" | Ernst Otto Fischer (1918–2007) | "for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so called sandwich compounds" | [73] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Wilkinson, Geoffrey" | Geoffrey Wilkinson (1921–1996) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 1974 | scope=row data-sort-value="Flory, Paul" | Paul J. Flory (1910–1985) | United States | "for his fundamental work, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules" | [74] | ||||||
| 1975 | scope=row data-sort-value="Cornforth, John" | John Warcup Cornforth (1917–2013) |  Australia United Kingdom | "for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions" | [75] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Prelog, Vladimir" | Vladimir Prelog (1906–1998) | Switzerland | "for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions" | ||||||||
| 1976 | scope=row data-sort-value="Lipscomb, William" | William N. Lipscomb (1919–2011) | United States | "for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding" | [76] | ||||||
| 1977 | scope=row data-sort-value="Prigogine, Ilya" | Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) |  Belgium | "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures" | [77] | ||||||
| 1978 | scope=row data-sort-value="Mitchell, Peter" | Peter D. Mitchell (1920–1992) | United Kingdom | "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory" | [78] | ||||||
| 1979 | scope=row data-sort-value="Brown, Herbert" | Herbert C. Brown (1912–2004) | United States | "for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis" | [79] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Wittig, Georg" | Georg Wittig (1897–1987) | ||||||||||
| 1980 | scope=row data-sort-value="Berg, Paul" | Paul Berg (1926–2023) | United States | "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA" | [80] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Gilbert, Walter" | Walter Gilbert (b. 1932) | United States | "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids" | ||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Sanger, Frederick" | Frederick Sanger (1918–2013) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 1981 | scope=row data-sort-value="Fukui, Kenichi" | Kenichi Fukui (1918–1998) |  Japan | "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions" | [81] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Hoffmann, Roald" | Roald Hoffmann (b. 1937) | United States Poland | |||||||||
| 1982 | scope=row data-sort-value="Klug, Aaron" | Aaron Klug (1926–2018) | United Kingdom | "for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes" | [82] | ||||||
| 1983 | scope=row data-sort-value="Taube, Henry" | Henry Taube (1915–2005) | United States | "for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes" | [83] | ||||||
| 1984 | scope=row data-sort-value="Merrifield, Robert" | Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921–2006) | United States | "for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix" | [84] | ||||||
| 1985 | scope=row data-sort-value="Hauptman, Herbert" | Herbert A. Hauptman (1917–2011) | United States | "for their outstanding achievements in developing direct methods for the determination of crystal structures" | [85] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Karle, Jerome" | Jerome Karle (1918–2013) | United States | |||||||||
| 1986 | scope=row data-sort-value="Herschbach, Dudley" | Dudley R. Herschbach (b. 1932) | United States | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" | [86] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Lee, Yuan" | Yuan T. Lee (b. 1936) | United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Polanyi, John" | John C. Polanyi (b. 1929) | Canada Hungary | |||||||||
| 1987 | scope=row data-sort-value="Cram, Donald" | Donald J. Cram (1919–2001) | United States | "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity" | [87] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Lehn, Jean-Marie" | Jean-Marie Lehn (b. 1939) | France | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Pedersen, Charles" | Charles J. Pedersen (1904–1989) | United States | |||||||||
| 1988 | scope=row data-sort-value="Deisenhofer, Johann" | Johann Deisenhofer (b. 1943) | "for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre" | [88] | |||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Huber, Robert" | Robert Huber (b. 1937) | ||||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Michel, Hartmut" | Hartmut Michel (b. 1948) | ||||||||||
| 1989 | scope=row data-sort-value="Altman, Sidney" | Sidney Altman (1939–2022) | Canada United States | "for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA" | [89] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Cech, Thomas" | Thomas Cech (b. 1947) | United States | |||||||||
| 1990 | scope=row data-sort-value="Corey, Elias James" | Elias James Corey (b. 1928) | United States | "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis" | [90] | ||||||
| 1991 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ernst, Richard R." | Richard R. Ernst (1933–2021) | Switzerland | "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy" | [91] | ||||||
| 1992 | scope=row data-sort-value="Marcus, Rudolph A." | Rudolph A. Marcus (b. 1923) | United States Canada | "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems" | [92] | ||||||
| 1993 | scope=row data-sort-value="Mullis, Kary" | Kary B. Mullis (1944–2019) | United States | "for contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry [...] for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method" | [93] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Smith, Michael" | Michael Smith (1932–2000) | Canada | "for contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry [...] for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies" | ||||||||
| 1994 | scope=row data-sort-value="Olah, George" | George A. Olah (1927–2017) | United States Hungary | "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry" | [94] | ||||||
| 1995 | scope=row data-sort-value="Crutzen, Paul" | Paul J. Crutzen (1933–2021) | Netherlands | "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone" | [95] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Molina, Mario J." | Mario J. Molina (1943–2020) |  Mexico | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Rowland, F. Sherwood" | Frank Sherwood Rowland (1927–2012) | United States | |||||||||
| 1996 | scope=row data-sort-value="Curl, Robert" | Robert F. Curl Jr. (1933–2022) | United States | "for their discovery of fullerenes" | [96] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Kroto, Harry" | Sir Harold W. Kroto (1939–2016) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Smalley, Richard" | Richard E. Smalley (1943–2005) | United States | |||||||||
| 1997 | scope=row data-sort-value="Boyer, Paul" | Paul D. Boyer (1918–2018) | United States | "for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" | [97] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Walker, John" | John E. Walker (b. 1941) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Skou, Jens" | Jens C. Skou (1918–2018) |  Denmark | "for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase" | ||||||||
| 1998 | scope=row data-sort-value="Kohn, Walter" | Walter Kohn (1923–2016) | United States | "for his development of the density-functional theory" | [98] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Pople, John" | John A. Pople (1925–2004) | United Kingdom | "for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry" | ||||||||
| 1999 | scope=row data-sort-value="Zewail, Ahmed" | Ahmed Zewail (1946–2016) | United States Egypt | "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy" | [99] | ||||||
| 2000 | scope=row data-sort-value="Heeger, Alan" | Alan J. Heeger (b. 1936) | United States | "for their discovery and development of conductive polymers" | [100] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="MacDiarmid, Alan" | Alan G. MacDiarmid (1927–2007) | United States New Zealand | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Shirakawa, Hideki" | Hideki Shirakawa (b. 1936) | Japan | |||||||||
| 2001 | scope=row data-sort-value="Knowles, William" | William S. Knowles (1917–2012) | United States | "for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions" | [101] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Noyori, Ryoji" | Ryōji Noyori (b. 1938) | Japan | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Sharpless, K. Barry" | K. Barry Sharpless (b. 1941) | United States | "for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions" | ||||||||
| 2002 | scope=row data-sort-value="Fenn, John" | John B. Fenn (1917–2010) | United States | "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules [...] for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" | [102] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Tanaka, Koichi" | Koichi Tanaka (b. 1959) | Japan | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Wuthrich, Kurt" | Kurt Wüthrich (b. 1938) | Switzerland | "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules [...] for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution" | ||||||||
| 2003 | scope=row data-sort-value="Agre, Peter" | Peter Agre (b. 1949) | United States | "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes [...] for the discovery of water channels" | [103] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="MacKinnon, Roderick" | Roderick MacKinnon (b. 1956) | United States | "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes [...] for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels" | ||||||||
| 2004 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ciechanover, Aaron" | Aaron Ciechanover (b. 1947) |  Israel | "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation" | [104] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Hershko, Avram" | Avram Hershko (b. 1937) | Israel | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Rose, Irwin" | Irwin Rose (1926–2015) | United States | |||||||||
| 2005 | scope=row data-sort-value="Chauvin, Yves" | Yves Chauvin (1930–2015) | France | "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis" | [105] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Grubbs, Robert" | Robert H. Grubbs (1942–2021) | United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Schrock, Richard" | Richard R. Schrock (b. 1945) | United States | |||||||||
| 2006 | scope=row data-sort-value="Kornberg, Roger" | Roger D. Kornberg (b. 1947) | United States | "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription" | [106] | ||||||
| 2007 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ertl, Gerhard" | Gerhard Ertl (b. 1936) |  Germany | "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces" | [107] | ||||||
| 2008 | scope=row data-sort-value="Shimomura, Osamu" | Osamu Shimomura (1928–2018) | Japan[108] | "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" | [109] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Chalfie, Martin" | Martin Chalfie (b. 1947) | United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Tsien, Roger" | Roger Y. Tsien (1952–2016) | United States | |||||||||
| 2009 | scope=row data-sort-value="Ramakrishnan, Venkatraman" | Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (b. 1952) | the country for Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is the UK according to the Nobel Prize page --> | United States United Kingdom | "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome" | [110] | |||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Steitz, Thomas" | Thomas A. Steitz (1940–2018) | United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Yonath, Ada" | Ada E. Yonath (b. 1939) | Israel | |||||||||
| 2010 | scope=row data-sort-value="Heck, Richard" | Richard F. Heck (1931–2015) | United States | "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis" | [111] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Negishi, Ei-ichi" | Ei-ichi Negishi (1935–2021) | Japan | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Suzuki, Akira" | Akira Suzuki (b. 1930) | Japan | |||||||||
| 2011 | scope=row data-sort-value="Shechtman, Dan" | Dan Shechtman (b. 1941) | Israel United States | "for the discovery of quasicrystals" | [112] | ||||||
| 2012 | scope=row data-sort-value="Lefkowitz, Robert" | Robert Lefkowitz (b. 1943) | United States | "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors" | [113] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Kobilka, Brian" | Brian Kobilka (b. 1955) | United States | |||||||||
| 2013 | scope=row data-sort-value="Karplus, Martin" | Martin Karplus (b. 1930) | United States Austria | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" | [114] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Levitt, Michael" | Michael Levitt (b. 1947) | United States United Kingdom Israel[115] | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Warshel, Arieh" | Arieh Warshel (b. 1940) | United States Israel | |||||||||
| 2014 | scope=row data-sort-value="Betzig, Eric" | Eric Betzig (b. 1960) | United States | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" | [116] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Hell, Stefan" | Stefan W. Hell (b. 1962) | Germany Romania[117] | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Moerner, William" | William E. Moerner (b. 1953) | United States | |||||||||
| 2015 | scope=row data-sort-value="Lindahl, Tomas" | Tomas Lindahl (b. 1938) | Sweden United Kingdom | "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" | [118] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Modrich, Paul" | Paul L. Modrich (b. 1946) | United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Sancar, Aziz" | Aziz Sancar (b. 1946) | United States Turkey | |||||||||
| 2016 | scope=row data-sort-value="Sauvage, Jean-Pierre" | Jean-Pierre Sauvage (b. 1944) | France | "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines" | [119] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Stoddart, Fraser" | Fraser Stoddart (b. 1942) | United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Feringa, Ben" | Ben Feringa (b. 1951) | Netherlands | |||||||||
| 2017 | scope=row data-sort-value="Dubochet, Jacques" | Jacques Dubochet (b. 1942) | Switzerland | "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" | [120] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Frank, Joachim" | Joachim Frank (b. 1940) | Germany United States[121] | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Henderson, Richard" | Richard Henderson (b. 1945) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 2018 | scope=row data-sort-value="Arnold, Frances" | Frances Arnold (b. 1956) | United States | "for the directed evolution of enzymes" | [122] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Smith, George" | George Smith (b. 1941) | United States | "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies" | ||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Winter, Gregory" | Sir Gregory Winter (b. 1951) | United Kingdom | |||||||||
| 2019 | scope=row data-sort-value="Goodenough, John" | John B. Goodenough (1922–2023) | United States | "for the development of lithium ion batteries" | [123] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Whittingham, M. Stanley" | M. Stanley Whittingham (b. 1941) | United Kingdom United States | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Yoshino, Akira" | Akira Yoshino (b. 1948) | Japan | |||||||||
| 2020 | scope=row data-sort-value="Charpentier, Emmanuelle" | Emmanuelle Charpentier (b. 1968) | France | "for the development of a method for genome editing" | [124] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Doudna, Jennifer" | Jennifer Doudna (b. 1964) | United States | |||||||||
| 2021 | scope=row data-sort-value="List, Benjamin" | Benjamin List (b. 1968) | Germany | "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis" | [125] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="MacMillan, David" | David W.C. MacMillan (b. 1968) | United Kingdom United States | |||||||||
| 2022 | scope=row data-sort-value="Bertozzi, Carolyn Ruth" | Carolyn Bertozzi (b. 1966) | United States | "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry" | [126] | ||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Meldal, Morten Peter" | Morten Meldal (b. 1954) | Denmark | |||||||||
| scope=row data-sort-value="Sharpless, Karl Barry" | K. Barry Sharpless (b. 1941) | United States | |||||||||
| 2023 | Moungi G. Bawendi (b. 1961) | United States France Tunisia | "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots" | [127] | |||||||
| Louis E. Brus (b. 1943) | United States | ||||||||||
| Alexey Ekimov (b. 1945) |
A. The form and spelling of the names in the name column is according to nobelprize.org, the official website of the Nobel Foundation. Alternative spellings and name forms, where they exist, are given at the articles linked from this column. Where available, an image of each Nobel laureate is provided. For the official pictures provided by the Nobel Foundation, see the pages for each Nobel laureate at nobelprize.org.
B. The information in the country column is according to nobelprize.org, the official website of the Nobel Foundation. This information may not necessarily reflect the recipient's birthplace or citizenship.
C. The citation for each award is quoted (not always in full) from nobelprize.org, the official website of the Nobel Foundation. The links in this column are to articles (or sections of articles) on the history and areas of chemistry for which the awards were presented. The links are intended only as a guide and explanation. For a full account of the work done by each Nobel laureate, please see the biography articles linked from the name column.