Wolf Prize in Chemistry - Laureates

Laureates

Year Name Nationality Citation
1978 Carl Djerassi United States for his work in bioorganic chemistry, application of new spectroscopic techniques, and his support of international cooperation.
1979 Herman Mark Austria / United States for his contributions to understanding the structure and behavior of natural and synthetic polymers.
1980 Henry Eyring Mexico / United States for his development of absolute rate theory and its imaginative applications to chemical and physical processes.
1981 Joseph Chatt United Kingdom for pioneering and fundamental contributions to synthetic transition metal chemistry, particularly transition metal hydrides and dinitrogen complexes.
1982 John Charles Polanyi Canada for his studies of chemical reactions in unprecedented detail by developing the infrared chemiluminiscence technique, and for envisaging the chemical laser.
George C. Pimentel United States for development of matrix isolation spectroscopy and for the discovery of photodissociation lasers and chemical lasers.
1983/4 Herbert S. Gutowsky United States for his pioneering work in the development and applications of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in chemistry.
Harden M. McConnell United States for his studies of the electronic structure of molecules through paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and for the introduction and biological applications of spin label techniques.
John S. Waugh United States for his fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in solids.
1984/5 Rudolph A. Marcus Canada / United States for his contributions to chemical kinetics, especially the theories of unimolecular reactions and electron transfer reactions.
1986 Elias James Corey United States for outstanding research on the synthesis of many highly complex natural products and the demonstration of novel ways of thinking about such syntheses.
Albert Eschenmoser Switzerland for outstanding research on the synthesis, stereochemistry and reaction mechanisms for formation of natural products, especially Vitamin-B12.
1987 David C. Phillips
David M. Blow
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
for their contributions to protein X-ray crystallography and to the elucidation of structures of enzymes and their mechanisms of action.
1988 Joshua Jortner
Raphael David Levine
Israel
Israel
for their incisive theoretical studies elucidating energy acquisition and disposal in molecular systems and mechanisms for dynamical selectivity and specificity.
1989 Duilio Arigoni
Alan R. Battersby
Switzerland
United Kingdom
for their fundamental contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of enzymic reactions and of the biosynthesis of natural products, in particular the pigments of life.
1990 No award
1991 Richard R. Ernst Switzerland for his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially Fourier-transform and two-dimensional NMR
Alexander Pines Rhodesia / United States for his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially multiple-quantum and high-spin NMR.
1992 John Pople United Kingdom for his outstanding contributions to theoretical chemistry, particularly in developing effective and widely used modern quantum- chemical methods.
1993 Ahmed Hassan Zewail Egypt / United States for pioneering the development of laser femtochemistry. Using lasers and molecular beams, femtochemistry has made it now possible to probe the evolution of chemical reactions as they actually happen in real time.
1994/5 Richard Lerner
Peter Schultz
United States
United States
for developing catalytic antibodies, thus permitting the catalysis of chemical reactions considered impossible to achieve by classical chemical procedures.
1995/6 Gilbert Stork
Samuel J. Danishefsky
United States
United States
for designing and developing novel chemical reactions which have opened new avenues to the synthesis of complex molecules, particularly polysaccharides and many other biologically and medicinally important compounds.
1996/7 No award
1998 Gerhard Ertl
Gabor A. Somorjai
Germany
Hungary
for their outstanding contributions to the field of the surface science in general, and for their elucidation of fundamental mechanisms of heterogeneous catalytic reactions at single crystal surfaces in particular.
1999 Raymond U. Lemieux Canada for his fundamental and seminal contributions to the study and synthesis of oligosaccharides and to the elucidation of their role in molecular recognition in biological systems.
2000 Frank Albert Cotton United States for opening up an entirely new phase of transition metal chemistry based on pairs and clusters of metal atoms directly linked by single or multiple bonds.
2001 Henri B. Kagan
Ryōji Noyori
K. Barry Sharpless
France
Japan
United States
for their pioneering, creative and crucial work in developing asymmetric catalysis for the synthesis of chiral molecules, greatly increasing mankind's ability to create new products of fundamental and practical importance.
2002/3 No award
2004 Harry B. Gray United States for pioneering work in bio-inorganic chemistry, unravelling novel principles of structure and long-range electron transfer in proteins.
2005 Richard N. Zare United States for his ingenious applications of laser techniques, for identifying complex mechanisms in molecules, and their use in analytical chemistry.
2006/7 Ada Yonath
George Feher
Israel
United States
for ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis.
2008 William E. Moerner
Allen J. Bard
United States
United States
for the ingenious creation of a new field of science, single molecule spectroscopy and electrochemistry, with impact at the nanoscopic regime, from the molecular and cellular domain to complex material systems.
2009 No award
2010 No award
2011 Stuart A. Rice
Ching W. Tang
Krzysztof Matyjaszewski
United States;
United States;
Poland / United States
for the deep creative contributions to the chemical sciences in the field of synthesis, properties and an understanding of organic materials.
2012 A. Paul Alivisatos United States for his development of the colloidal inorganic nanocrystal as a building block of nanoscience and for making fundamental contributions to controlling the synthesis of these particles, to measuring and understanding their physical properties.
Charles M. Lieber United States for his seminal contributions to nanochemistry and particularly the synthesis of single-crystalline semiconductor nanowires, characterization of the fundamental physical properties of nanowires, and their application to electronics, photonics and nanomedicine.

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