The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded each year to individuals or teams who make significant contributions to the field of chemistry. Since its inception in 1901, this prestigious award has honored many scientists for their groundbreaking discoveries, shaping our understanding of the world. Below is a list of some notable Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, organized by recent winners and key discoveries throughout history.
An Overview of Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are five important awards given each year to people who have done great things for humanity. They were created by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and inventor, in his will in 1895. The first prizes were awarded in 1901.
The Nobel Prizes are awarded in the following fields:
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Physiology or Medicine
- Literature
- Peace
There is also a sixth prize for Economic Sciences, which started in 1969. This prize is funded by Sweden’s central bank and is also managed by the Nobel Foundation.
Every year, a special ceremony is held to present the awards. Each winner, called a laureate, receives:
- A gold medal (plated with 24-karat gold)
- A diploma
- A monetary award (as of 2023, this amount is 11,000,000 SEK, which is about $1,035,000).
List of Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry from 1901 to 2024
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually to individuals or groups for exceptional contributions to the field of chemistry. Since its inception in 1901, the prize has recognized groundbreaking discoveries and innovations that have significantly advanced scientific understanding and benefited humanity.
Here is the complete list of Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2024:
Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry from 1901 to 2024 | |
Name | Year |
Jacobus H. van ‘t Hoff | 1901 |
Emil Fischer | 1902 |
Svante Arrhenius | 1903 |
Sir William Ramsay | 1904 |
Adolf von Baeyer | 1905 |
Henri Moissan | 1906 |
Eduard Buchner | 1907 |
Ernest Rutherford | 1908 |
Wilhelm Ostwald | 1909 |
Otto Wallach | 1910 |
Marie Curie | 1911 |
Victor Grignard | 1912 |
Paul Sabatier | |
Alfred Werner | 1913 |
Theodore W. Richards | 1914 |
Richard Willstätter | 1915 |
Fritz Haber | 1918 |
Walther Nernst | 1920 |
Frederick Soddy | 1921 |
Francis W. Aston | 1922 |
Fritz Pregl | 1923 |
Richard Zsigmondy | 1925 |
The Svedberg | 1926 |
Heinrich Wieland | 1927 |
Adolf Windaus | 1928 |
Arthur Harden and Hans von Euler-Chelpin | 1929 |
Hans Fischer | 1930 |
Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius | 1931 |
Irving Langmuir | 1932 |
Harold C. Urey | 1934 |
Frédéric Joliot and Irène Joliot-Curie | 1935 |
Peter Debye | 1936 |
Norman Haworth | 1937 |
Paul Karrer | |
Richard Kuhn | 1938 |
Adolf Butenandt | 1939 |
Leopold Ruzicka | |
George de Hevesy | 1943 |
Otto Hahn | 1944 |
Artturi Virtanen | 1945 |
James B. Sumner | 1946 |
John H. Northrop and Wendell M. Stanley | |
Sir Robert Robinson | 1947 |
Arne Tiselius | 1948 |
William F. Giauque | 1949 |
Otto Diels and Kurt Alder | 1950 |
Edwin M. McMillan and Glenn T. Seaborg | 1951 |
Archer J.P. Martin and Richard L.M. Synge | 1952 |
Hermann Staudinger | 1953 |
Linus Pauling | 1954 |
Vincent du Vigneaud | 1955 |
Sir Cyril Hinshelwood and Nikolay Semenov | 1956 |
Lord Todd | 1957 |
Frederick Sanger | 1958 |
Jaroslav Heyrovsky | 1959 |
Willard F. Libby | 1960 |
Melvin Calvin | 1961 |
Max F. Perutz and John C. Kendrew | 1962 |
Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta | 1963 |
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin | 1964 |
Robert B. Woodward | 1965 |
Robert S. Mulliken | 1966 |
Manfred Eigen, Ronald G.W. Norrish and George Porter | 1967 |
Lars Onsager | 1968 |
Derek Barton and Odd Hassel | 1969 |
Luis Leloir | 1970 |
Gerhard Herzberg | 1971 |
Christian Anfinsen | 1972 |
Stanford Moore and William H. Stein | |
Ernst Otto Fischer and Geoffrey Wilkinson | 1973 |
Paul J. Flory | 1974 |
John Cornforth | 1975 |
Vladimir Prelog | |
William Lipscomb | 1976 |
Ilya Prigogine | 1977 |
Peter Mitchell | 1978 |
Herbert C. Brown and Georg Wittig | 1979 |
Paul Berg | 1980 |
Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger | |
Kenichi Fukui and Roald Hoffmann | 1981 |
Aaron Klug | 1982 |
Henry Taube | 1983 |
Bruce Merrifield | 1984 |
Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle | 1985 |
Dudley R. Herschbach, Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi | 1986 |
Donald J. Cram, Jean-Marie Lehn and Charles J. Pedersen | 1987 |
Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel | 1988 |
Sidney Altman and Thomas R. Cech | 1989 |
Elias James Corey | 1990 |
Richard R. Ernst | 1991 |
Rudolph A. Marcus | 1992 |
Kary B. Mullis | 1993 |
Michael Smith | |
George A. Olah | 1994 |
Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland | 1995 |
Robert F. Curl Jr., Sir Harold Kroto and Richard E. Smalley | 1996 |
Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker | 1997 |
Jens C. Skou | |
Walter Kohn | 1998 |
John Pople | |
Ahmed Zewail | 1999 |
Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa | 2000 |
William Knowles and Ryoji Noyori | 2001 |
K. Barry Sharpless | |
John B. Fenn and Koichi Tanaka | 2002 |
Kurt Wüthrich | |
Peter Agre | 2003 |
Roderick MacKinnon | |
Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose | 2004 |
Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock | 2005 |
Roger D. Kornberg | 2006 |
Gerhard Ertl | 2007 |
Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien | 2008 |
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath | 2009 |
Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki | 2010 |
Dan Shechtman | 2011 |
Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka | 2012 |
Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel | 2013 |
Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner | 2014 |
Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar | 2015 |
Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa | 2016 |
Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson | 2017 |
Frances H. Arnold | 2018 |
George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter | |
John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino | 2019 |
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna | 2020 |
Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan | 2021 |
Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless | 2022 |
Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Yekimov | 2023 |
David Baker | 2024 |
Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper |