PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: Nobel Prize - Chemistry
British physicist
Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand-born British physicist considered the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867). Rutherford was the central figure in the study of radioactivity, and...
German chemist
Wilhelm Ostwald was a Russian-German chemist and philosopher who was instrumental in establishing physical chemistry as an acknowledged branch of chemistry. He was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize for Chemistry...
American scientist
Linus Pauling was an American theoretical physical chemist who became the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes. His first prize (1954) was awarded for research into the nature of the chemical...
British biochemist
Frederick Sanger was an English biochemist who was twice the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He was awarded the prize in 1958 for his determination of the structure of the insulin molecule....
German chemist
Fritz Haber was a German physical chemist and winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his successful work on nitrogen fixation. The Haber-Bosch process combined nitrogen and hydrogen to form ammonia...
American chemist
Irving Langmuir was an American physical chemist who was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry.” He was the second American and the first...
Polish-born French physicist
Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With Henri Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie, she was awarded the 1903...
German chemist
Walther Nernst was a German scientist who was one of the founders of modern physical chemistry. His theoretical and experimental work in chemistry, including his formulation of the heat theorem, known...
American chemist
Harold C. Urey was an American scientist awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1934 for his discovery of the heavy form of hydrogen known as deuterium. He was a key figure in the development of the...
Swiss chemist
Alfred Werner was a Swiss chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1913 for his research into the structure of coordination compounds. Werner was the fourth and last child of Jean-Adam Werner,...
Swedish chemist
Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish physicist and physical chemist known for his theory of electrolytic dissociation and his model of the greenhouse effect. In 1903, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry....
American chemist
Glenn T. Seaborg was an American nuclear chemist best known for his work on isolating and identifying transuranium elements (those heavier than uranium). He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with...
German chemist
Karl Ziegler was a German chemist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the Italian chemist Giulio Natta. Ziegler’s research with organometallic compounds made possible the industrial production...
American chemist
Robert Burns Woodward was an American chemist best known for his syntheses of complex organic substances, including cholesterol and cortisone (1951), strychnine (1954), and vitamin B12 (1971). He was awarded...
American chemist
Paul J. Flory was an American polymer chemist who was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules.”...
British chemist
Sir William Ramsay was a British physical chemist who discovered four gases (neon, argon, krypton, xenon) and showed that they (with helium and radon) formed an entire family of new elements, the noble...
English chemist
Dorothy Hodgkin was an English chemist whose determination of the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12 brought her the 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Dorothy Crowfoot was the eldest of four sisters...
British computer scientist
Demis Hassabis is an English computer scientist who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work using artificial intelligence (AI) to predict protein structures. He shared half the prize...
American chemist
Willard Frank Libby was an American chemist whose technique of carbon-14 (or radiocarbon) dating provided an extremely valuable tool for archaeologists, anthropologists, and earth scientists. For this...
American biochemist
Melvin Calvin was an American biochemist who received the 1961 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his discovery of the chemical pathways of photosynthesis. Calvin was the son of immigrant parents. His father...
German chemist
Emil Fischer was a German chemist who was awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in recognition of his investigations of the sugar and purine groups of substances. Fischer was the eighth child and...
Dutch chemist
Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff was a Dutch physical chemist and the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1901), for his work on rates of chemical reaction, chemical equilibrium, and osmotic pressure....
American chemist
Elias James Corey is an American chemist, director of a research group that developed syntheses of scores of complicated organic molecules and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his original...
British chemist
Sir Derek H.R. Barton was a joint recipient, with Odd Hassel of Norway, of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on “conformational analysis,” the study of the three-dimensional geometric structure...
German chemist
Otto Hahn was a German chemist who, with the radiochemist Fritz Strassmann, is credited with the discovery of nuclear fission. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 and shared the Enrico...
British-American chemist
Fraser Stoddart was a Scottish-American chemist who was the first to successfully synthesize a mechanically interlocked molecule, known as a catenane, thereby helping to establish the field of mechanical...
British biologist
Richard Henderson is a Scottish biophysicist and molecular biologist who was the first to successfully produce a three-dimensional image of a biological molecule at atomic resolution using a technique...
American computer scientist
John M. Jumper is an American computer scientist who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work using artificial intelligence (AI) to find the three-dimensional structure of proteins. He...
American physician and biologist
Robert J. Lefkowitz is an American physician and molecular biologist who demonstrated the existence of receptors—molecules that receive and transmit signals for cells. His research on the structure and...
American chemist
Louis Brus is an American physical chemist who was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in discovering and producing quantum dots, which are very small particles whose unusual quantum...
American chemist
Kary Mullis was an American biochemist, cowinner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a simple technique that allows a specific stretch of DNA...
American biochemist
Jennifer Doudna is an American biochemist best known for her discovery, with French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, of a molecular tool known as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic...
Swedish biochemist
Tomas Lindahl is a Swedish biochemist known for his discovery of base excision repair, a major mechanism of DNA repair, by which cells maintain their genetic integrity. Base excision repair corrects damage...
Turkish-American biochemist
Aziz Sancar is a Turkish-American biochemist who contributed to mechanistic discoveries underlying a cellular process known as nucleotide excision repair, whereby cells correct errors in DNA that arise...
French microbiologist
Emmanuelle Charpentier is a French scientist who discovered, with American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, a molecular tool known as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9....
British biochemst
Gregory P. Winter is a British biochemist known for his development of the first humanized antibodies, his research on the directed evolution of antibodies, and his application of phage display technology...
Swiss biophysicist
Jacques Dubochet is a Swiss biophysicist who succeeded in vitrifying water around biomolecules, thereby preventing the formation of ice crystals in biological specimens. Dubochet discovered that water...
American chemist
Carolyn R. Bertozzi is an American chemist known for her application of chemical synthesis to the study of biological systems. She coined the term bioorthogonal chemistry to describe the use of click reactions—quick,...
American physicist
Eric Betzig is an American physicist who won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for using fluorescent molecules to bypass the inherent resolution limit in optical microscopy. He shared the prize with American...
British chemist
John Walker is a British chemist who was corecipient, with Paul D. Boyer, of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997 for their explanation of the enzymatic process that creates adenosine triphosphate (ATP)....
Israeli biochemist
Ada Yonath is an Israeli protein crystallographer who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with Indian-born American physicist and molecular biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and American...
American chemist
Herbert Charles Brown was one of the leading American chemists of the 20th century. His seminal work on customized reducing agents and organoborane compounds in synthetic organic chemistry had a major...
Indian-born physicist and molecular biologist
Venki Ramakrishnan is an Indian-born physicist and molecular biologist who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with American biophysicist and biochemist Thomas Steitz and Israeli protein...
Canadian-American scientist
Sidney Altman was a Canadian American molecular biologist who, with Thomas R. Cech, received the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discoveries concerning the catalytic properties of RNA, or ribonucleic...
American chemist
Roger Y. Tsien was an American chemist who was a corecipient, with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie, of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Tsien attended Harvard University before receiving a Ph.D....
American physician and biologist
Brian K. Kobilka is an American physician and molecular biologist whose research on the structure and function of cell-surface molecules known as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)—the largest family...
Danish chemist
Morten P. Meldal is a Danish chemist whose research into the synthesis of peptides and other organic compounds contributed to the development of click chemistry, in which simple, quick, high-yielding reactions...
American-Egyptian chemist
Ahmed H. Zewail was an Egyptian-born chemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999 for developing a rapid laser technique that enabled scientists to study the action of atoms during chemical reactions....
Scottish-born chemist
David W.C. MacMillan is a Scottish-American organic chemist who developed asymmetric organocatalysis, in which a small, organic, carbon-based molecule is used as a catalyst to drive the production of a...
American chemist
K. Barry Sharpless is an American scientist who was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2001 and 2022. He shared the 2001 prize with William S. Knowles and Noyori Ryōji for developing the first...
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