Nobel Prize in Chemistry

• 1. Introduction

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  The Nobel Prize in Chemistry carries a citation that laureates receive alongside their gold medal and diploma, and that citation is often the most precise sentence ever written about a scientist's life work. In 1901, the first such citation read: "for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions." The recipient was Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff of the Netherlands, and the prize he accepted that December set a template that has held for well over a century.

  The prize is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, chosen through a process so slow and deliberate that it is arguably the source of the award's authority. It traces back to a single document, signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on the 27th of November 1895 by a man named Alfred Nobel, who would be dead within the year. What Nobel set in motion that afternoon is still running today, with all the contradictions and debates that come with measuring something as restless as science.

• 2. Alfred Nobel's Will

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  Nobel wrote his final will less than a year before he died, and signed it in Paris at the Swedish-Norwegian Club on the 27th of November 1895. He bequeathed 94% of his total assets, amounting to 31 million Swedish kronor, to fund five prizes for those who confer the greatest benefit on mankind in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, and literature.

  Skepticism about the will was widespread enough that it took nearly a year and a half before the Storting, the Norwegian Parliament, approved it on the 26th of April 1897. The two executors of the will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to manage Nobel's fortune and organize the prizes. The prize-awarding organizations were brought on board in rapid succession: the Karolinska Institutet on the 7th of June, the Swedish Academy on the 9th, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the 11th. King Oscar II promulgated the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes in 1900, and the first prizes followed in 1901.

• 3. The Medal and Its Latin

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  Erik Lindberg designed the reverse face of the Chemistry medal, which is identical to that of the Physics medal. It shows the Goddess of Nature in the form of Isis emerging from clouds, holding a cornucopia, while the Genius of Science lifts the veil covering Nature's cold and austere face. The medal is manufactured by Svenska Medalj in Eskilstuna.

  Inscribed around the image is a line adapted from book 6 of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil: "Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes," meaning "It is beneficial to have improved human life through discovered arts." The text "REG. ACAD. SCIENT. SUEC." denotes the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the reverse. Each laureate also receives a diploma designed uniquely for them, handed directly by the King of Sweden, and a document at the ceremony indicating the cash award, which has varied: it reached 10 million SEK in 2009 before dropping to 8 million Swedish Krona in 2012.

• 4. How Laureates Are Chosen

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  Forms are sent to roughly three thousand selected individuals who are invited to submit nominations, and the names they suggest are never publicly announced. Nominees themselves are not told they are under consideration. Nomination records are sealed for fifty years, though in practice some names do become known before that period ends.

  From those initial submissions, the committee produces a list of approximately two hundred preliminary candidates, which is then sent to selected experts in the field. Those experts reduce the list to around fifteen names. The committee submits a final report with recommendations to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which makes the formal decision. Posthumous nominations are not permitted, but an award can still be given if a nominee dies in the months between nomination and the committee's decision. The prize also requires that the significance of recognized work be tested by time, meaning the typical gap between a discovery and an award runs on the order of twenty years, and can stretch much longer.

• 5. Women and the Prize

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  Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, and she remains a singular figure in the prize's history: she had already won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, making her the only person to win in two different sciences. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie received the Chemistry prize in 1935, making them the only mother-daughter pair in the award's history.

  From 1901 through 2025, eight women in total have won the prize. Dorothy Hodgkin won in 1964, Ada Yonath in 2009, and Frances Arnold in 2018. In 2020, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna shared the award. Carolyn R. Bertozzi received it in 2022. Over that same span, the total number of individual laureates reached 198. Two people have won twice: Frederick Sanger and K. Barry Sharpless. The 2025 prize went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi for the development of metal-organic frameworks.

• 6. The Boundaries of Chemistry

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  In the thirty years leading up to 2012, the Chemistry prize was awarded ten times for work classified as biochemistry or molecular biology, and once to a materials scientist. In the ten years before 2012, only four prizes recognized work strictly within chemistry. Chemists have criticized the prize for going more frequently to non-chemists than to chemists.

  One explanation offered by The Economist points back to Nobel's original bequest, which named only five categories. Biology was in its infancy in Nobel's day, so no prize was established for it. As a result, work in the biological sciences often gets funneled into the Chemistry category, the closest available fit. A 2020 study by Ioannidis and colleagues found that half of all science Nobel Prizes awarded between 1995 and 2017 were clustered in just a few disciplines. Within chemistry, molecular chemistry was the dominant prize-winning specialty, with molecular chemists winning 5.3% of all science Nobel Prizes during that period.