Nobel Prize Award for Chemistry 1905 to 1925

About the Nobel Prize Award for Chemistry from 1905 to 1925 including the scientists Rutherford and Curie, their works, and history.

CHEMISTRY

1905 Adolf von Baeyer (1835-1917), German

Work: Research into organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds

1906 Henri Moissan (1852-1907), French

Work: Isolation of the element fluorine; development of the electric furnace

1907 Eduard Buchner (1860-1917), German

Work: Discovery of cell-free fermentation

1908 Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), British

Work: Research into the artificial disintegration of elements and the chemistry of radioactive substances

1909 Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932), German

Work: Investigations of catalysts and the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibrium and rates of reaction

1910 Otto Wallach (1847-1931), German

Work: Pioneer efforts in the field of alicyclic compounds

1911 Marie S. Curie (1867-1934), French (b. Poland)

Work: Discovery of radium and polonium

1912 Victor Grignard (1871-1935), French

Work: Discovery of the Grignard reagent

Paul Sabatier (1854-1941), French

Work: Development of a method for hydrogenating organic compounds in the presence of disintegrated metals

1913 Alfred Werner (1866-1919), Swiss (b. France)

Work: Research into the linkage of atoms and molecules

1914 Theodore W. Richards (1868-1928), American

Work: Determined the atomic weights of several elements

1915 Richard M. Willstatter (1872-1942), German

Work: Research into vegetable pigments, especially chlorophyll

Nobel Laureate: A native of Karlsruhe, Willstater began as a chemistry professor at the University of Munich in 1902. He became director of Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1912, but three years later he transferred back to the University of Munich. At first he seemed quite comfortable in his job until the rising tide of anti-Semitism on campus turned him sour. A Jew himself, Willstatter called it quits when he learned in 1924 that the university had refused to hire Heinrich Goldschmidt because he was Jewish. Although his students begged him to change his mind and the Munich City Council passed a resolution urging him to reconsider, Willstatter departed. In his prizewinning investigations into plant pigmentations, he learned that the green color in vegetation is a composite of two different kinds of chlorophyll, one blue-green, the other yellow-green. This and other work earned him the title of "the Einstein of chemistry." In 1939 Willstatter retired to Locarno, Switzerland, where he died of heart failure three years later at age 70.

1916 No award

1917 No award

1918 Fritz Haber (1868-1934), German

Work: Synthesis of ammonia from its elements, nitrogen and hydrogen

1919 No award

1920 Walter H. Nernst (1864-1941), German

Work: Thermochemical research

1921 Frederick Soddy (1877-1956), British

Work: Research into radioactive substances and isotopes

1922 Francis W. Aston (1877-1945), British

Work: Use of the mass spectrograph to discover isotopes of many nonradioactive elements

1923 Fritz Pregl (1869-1930), Austrian

Work: Devised a way to microanalyze organic materials

1924 No award

1925 Richard A. Zsigmondy (1865-1926), German (b. Austria)

Work: Pioneer research in colloidal chemistry