# List of Nobel laureates in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Swedish: Nobelpriset i kemi) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896. These prizes are awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, of the Netherlands. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years. In 1901, van 't Hoff received 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
At least 25 laureates have received the Nobel Prize for contributions in the field of organic chemistry, more than any other field of chemistry. Two Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry, Germans Richard Kuhn (1938) and Adolf Butenandt (1939), were not allowed by their government to accept the prize. They would later receive a medal and diploma, but not the money. Frederick Sanger is one out of three laureates to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice in the same subject, in 1958 and 1980. John Bardeen, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 and 1972, and Karl Barry Sharpless, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2001 and 2022, are the others. Two others have won Nobel Prizes twice, one in chemistry and one in another subject: Maria Skłodowska-Curie (physics in 1903, chemistry in 1911) and Linus Pauling (chemistry in 1954, peace in 1962). As of 2023, the prize has been awarded to 192 individuals, including eight women (Maria Skłodowska-Curie being the first to be awarded in 1911).
There have been eight years for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was not awarded (1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940–42). There were also nine years for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was delayed for one year. The Prize was not awarded in 1914, as the Nobel Committee for Chemistry decided that none of that year's nominations met the necessary criteria, but was awarded to Theodore William Richards in 1915 and counted as the 1914 prize. This precedent was followed for the 1918 prize awarded to Fritz Haber in 1919, the 1920 prize awarded to Walther Nernst in 1921, the 1921 prize awarded to Frederick Soddy in 1922, the 1925 prize awarded to Richard Zsigmondy in 1926, the 1927 prize awarded to Heinrich Otto Wieland in 1928, the 1938 prize awarded to Richard Kuhn in 1939, the 1943 prize awarded to George de Hevesy in 1944, and the 1944 prize awarded to Otto Hahn in 1945.
In 2020, Ioannidis et al. reported that half of the Nobel Prizes for science awarded between 1995 and 2017 were clustered in just a few disciplines within their broader fields. Atomic physics, particle physics, cell biology, and neuroscience dominated the two subjects outside chemistry, while molecular chemistry was the chief prize-winning discipline in its domain. Molecular chemists won 5.3% of all science Nobel Prizes during this period.

## Laureates

* 1901
* 1910
* 1920
* 1930
* 1940
* 1950
* 1960
* 1970
* 1980
* 1990
* 2000
* 2010
* 2020
| Year | Image | Laureate | Nationality | Rationale | Ref |
| 1901 | | Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (1852–1911) | Dutch | "[for his] discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions" | |
| 1902 | | Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919) | German | "[for] his work on sugar and purine syntheses" | |
| 1903 | | Svante August Arrhenius (1859–1927) | Swedish | "[for] his electrolytic theory of dissociation" | |
| 1904 | | Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916) | British | "[for his] discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system" | |
| 1905 | | Adolf von Baeyer (1835–1917) | German | "[for] the advancement of organic chemistry and the chemical industry, through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds" | |
| 1906 | | Henri Moissan (1852–1907) | French | "[for his] investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, and for [the] electric furnace called after him" | |
| 1907 | | Eduard Buchner (1860–1917) | German | "for his biochemical researches and his discovery of cell-free fermentation" | |
| 1908 | | Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) | New Zealander | "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances" | |
| 1909 | | Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) | German | "[for] his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction" | |
| 1910 | | Otto Wallach (1847–1931) | German | "[for] his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his pioneer work in the field of alicyclic compounds" | |
| 1911 | | Marie Curie, née Skłodowska (1867–1934) | Polish French | "[for] the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element" | |
| 1912 | | Victor Grignard (1871–1935) | French | "for the discovery of the [...] Grignard reagent" | |
| 1912 | | Paul Sabatier (1854–1941) | French | "for his method of hydrogenating organic compounds in the presence of finely disintegrated metals" | |
| 1913 | | Alfred Werner (1866–1919) | Swiss | "[for] his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules [...] especially in inorganic chemistry" | |
| 1914 | | Theodore William Richards (1868–1928) | American | "[for] his accurate determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements" | |
| 1915 | | Richard Martin Willstätter (1872–1942) | German | "for his researches on plant pigments, especially chlorophyll" | |
| 1916 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1917 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1918 | | Fritz Haber (1868–1934) | German | "for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements" | |
| 1919 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1920 | | Walther Hermann Nernst (1864–1941) | German | "[for] his work in thermochemistry" | |
| 1921 | | Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) | British | "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes" | |
| 1922 | | Francis William Aston (1877–1945) | British | "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule" | |
| 1923 | | Fritz Pregl (1869–1930) | Yugoslavian Austrian | "for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances" | |
| 1924 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1925 | | Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (1865–1929) | Austrian | "for his demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used" | |
| 1926 | | The (Theodor) Svedberg (1884–1971) | Swedish | "for his work on disperse systems" | |
| 1927 | | Heinrich Otto Wieland (1877–1957) | German | "for his investigations of the constitution of the bile acids and related substances" | |
| 1928 | | Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus (1876–1959) | German | "[for] his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins" | |
| 1929 | | Arthur Harden (1865–1940) | British | "for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes" | |
| 1929 | | Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin (1873–1964) | German Swedish | "for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes" | |
| 1930 | | Hans Fischer (1881–1945) | German | "for his researches into the constitution of haemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of haemin" | |
| 1931 | | Carl Bosch (1874–1940) | German | "[for] their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods" | |
| 1931 | | Friedrich Bergius (1884–1949) | German | "[for] their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods" | |
| 1932 | | Irving Langmuir (1881–1957) | American | "for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry" | |
| 1933 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1934 | | Harold Clayton Urey (1893–1981) | American | "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen" | |
| 1935 | | Frédéric Joliot (1900–1958) | French | "[for] their synthesis of new radioactive elements" | |
| 1935 | | Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956) | French | "[for] their synthesis of new radioactive elements" | |
| 1936 | | Peter Debye (1884–1966) | Dutch | "[for his work on] molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments and the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases" | |
| 1937 | | Walter Norman Haworth (1883–1950) | British | "for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C" | |
| 1937 | | Paul Karrer (1889–1971) | Swiss | "for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B$_2$" | |
| 1938 | | Richard Kuhn (1900–1967) | German | "for his work on carotenoids and vitamins" | |
| 1939 | | Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt (1903–1995) | German | "for his work on sex hormones" | |
| 1939 | | Leopold Ružička (1887–1976) | Yugoslavian Swiss | "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes" | |
| 1940 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1941 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1942 | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1943 | | George de Hevesy (1885–1966) | Hungarian | "for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes" | |
| 1944 | | Otto Hahn (1879–1968) | German | "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei" | |
| 1945 | | Artturi Ilmari Virtanen (1895–1973) | Finnish | "for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method" | |
| 1946 | | James Batcheller Sumner (1887–1955) | American | "for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized" | |
| 1946 | | John Howard Northrop (1891–1987) | American | "for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form" | |
| 1946 | | Wendell Meredith Stanley (1904–1971) | American | "for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form" | |
| 1947 | | Sir Robert Robinson (1886–1975) | British | "for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids" | |
| 1948 | | Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius (1902–1971) | Swedish | "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins" | |
| 1949 | | William Francis Giauque (1895–1982) | Canadian American | "for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures" | |
| 1950 | | Otto Paul Hermann Diels (1876–1954) | West German | "for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis" | |
| 1950 | | Kurt Alder (1902–1958) | West German | "for their discovery and development of the diene synthesis" | |
| 1951 | | Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907–1991) | American | "for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements" | |
| 1951 | | Glenn Theodore Seaborg (1912–1999) | American | "for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements" | |
| 1952 | | Archer John Porter Martin (1910–2002) | British | "for their invention of partition chromatography" | |
| 1952 | | Richard Laurence Millington Synge (1914–1994) | British | "for their invention of partition chromatography" | |
| 1953 | | Hermann Staudinger (1881–1965) | West German | "for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry" | |
| 1954 | | Linus Pauling (1901–1994) | American | "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances" | |
| 1955 | | Vincent du Vigneaud (1901–1978) | American | "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone" | |
| 1956 | | Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (1897–1967) | British | "for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions" | |
| 1956 | | Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov (1896–1986) | Soviet | "for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions" | |
| 1957 | | Lord (Alexander R.) Todd (1907–1997) | British | "for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes" | |
| 1958 | | Frederick Sanger (1918–2013) | British | "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin" | |
| 1959 | | Jaroslav Heyrovský (1890–1967) | Czechoslovakian | "for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis" | |
| 1960 | | Willard Frank Libby (1908–1980) | American | "for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science" | |
| 1961 | | Melvin Calvin (1911–1997) | American | "for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants" | |
| 1962 | | Max Ferdinand Perutz (1914–2002) | Austrian British | "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins" | |
| 1962 | | John Cowdery Kendrew (1917–1997) | British | "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins" | |
| 1963 | | Karl Ziegler (1898–1973) | West German | "for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers" | |
| 1963 | | Giulio Natta (1903–1979) | Italian | "for their discoveries in the field of the chemistry and technology of high polymers" | |
| 1964 | | Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994) | British | "for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances" | |
| 1965 | | Robert Burns Woodward (1917–1979) | American | "for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis" | |
| 1966 | | Robert S. Mulliken (1896–1986) | American | "for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method" | |
| 1967 | | Manfred Eigen (1927–2019) | West German | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" | |
| 1967 | | Ronald George Wreyford Norrish (1897–1978) | British | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" | |
| 1967 | | George Porter (1920–2002) | British | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" | |
| 1968 | | Lars Onsager (1903–1976) | Norwegian American | "for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes" | |
| 1969 | | Derek H. R. Barton (1918–1998) | British | "for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry" | |
| 1969 | | Odd Hassel (1897–1981) | Norwegian | "for their contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry" | |
| 1970 | | Luis F. Leloir (1906–1987) | Argentine | "for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates" | |
| 1971 | | Gerhard Herzberg (1904–1999) | West German Canadian | "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals" | |
| 1972 | | Christian B. Anfinsen (1916–1995) | American | "for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation" | |
| 1972 | | Stanford Moore (1913–1982) | American | "for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule" | |
| 1972 | | William H. Stein (1911–1980) | American | "for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule" | |
| 1973 | | Ernst Otto Fischer (1918–2007) | West German | "for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so called sandwich compounds" | |
| 1973 | | Geoffrey Wilkinson (1921–1996) | British | "for their pioneering work, performed independently, on the chemistry of the organometallic, so called sandwich compounds" | |
| 1974 | | Paul J. Flory (1910–1985) | American | "for his fundamental work, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules" | |
| 1975 | | John Warcup Cornforth (1917–2013) | Australian British | "for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions" | |
| 1975 | | Vladimir Prelog (1906–1998) | Yugoslavian Swiss | "for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions" | |
| 1976 | | William N. Lipscomb (1919–2011) | American | "for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding" | |
| 1977 | | Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) | Belgian | "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures" | |
| 1978 | | Peter D. Mitchell (1920–1992) | British | "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory" | |
| 1979 | | Herbert C. Brown (1912–2004) | American | "for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis" | |
| 1979 | | Georg Wittig (1897–1987) | West German | "for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis" | |
| 1980 | | Paul Berg (1926–2023) | American | "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA" | |
| 1980 | | Walter Gilbert (b. 1932) | American | "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids" | |
| 1980 | | Frederick Sanger (1918–2013) | British | "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids" | |
| 1981 | | Kenichi Fukui (1918–1998) | Japanese | "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions" | |
| 1981 | | Roald Hoffmann (b. 1937) | Polish American | "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions" | |
| 1982 | | Aaron Klug (1926–2018) | British | "for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes" | |
| 1983 | | Henry Taube (1915–2005) | Canadian American | "for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes" | |
| 1984 | | Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921–2006) | American | "for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix" | |
| 1985 | | Herbert A. Hauptman (1917–2011) | American | "for their outstanding achievements in developing direct methods for the determination of crystal structures" | |
| 1985 | | Jerome Karle (1918–2013) | American | "for their outstanding achievements in developing direct methods for the determination of crystal structures" | |
| 1986 | | Dudley R. Herschbach (b. 1932) | American | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" | |
| 1986 | | Yuan T. Lee (b. 1936) | Taiwanese | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" | |
| 1986 | | John C. Polanyi (b. 1929) | Canadian | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" | |
| 1987 | | Donald J. Cram (1919–2001) | American | "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity" | |
| 1987 | | Jean-Marie Lehn (b. 1939) | French | "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity" | |
| 1987 | | Charles J. Pedersen (1904–1989) | American | "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity" | |
| 1988 | | Johann Deisenhofer (b. 1943) | West German | "for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre" | |
| 1988 | | Robert Huber (b. 1937) | West German | "for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre" | |
| 1988 | | Hartmut Michel (b. 1948) | West German | "for their determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre" | |
| 1989 | | Sidney Altman (1939–2022) | Canadian American | "for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA" | |
| 1989 | | Thomas Cech (b. 1947) | American | "for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA" | |
| 1990 | | Elias James Corey (b. 1928) | American | "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis" | |
| 1991 | | Richard R. Ernst (1933–2021) | Swiss | "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy" | |
| 1992 | | Rudolph A. Marcus (b. 1923) | Canadian American | "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems" | |
| 1993 | | Kary B. Mullis (1944–2019) | American | "for contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry [...] for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method" | |
| 1993 | | Michael Smith (1932–2000) | British Canadian | "for contributions to the developments of methods within DNA-based chemistry [...] for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies" | |
| 1994 | | George A. Olah (1927–2017) | Hungarian American | "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry" | |
| 1995 | | Paul J. Crutzen (1933–2021) | Dutch | "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone" | |
| 1995 | | Mario J. Molina (1943–2020) | Mexican | "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone" | |
| 1995 | | Frank Sherwood Rowland (1927–2012) | American | "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone" | |
| 1996 | | Robert F. Curl Jr. (1933–2022) | American | "for their discovery of fullerenes" | |
| 1996 | | Sir Harold W. Kroto (1939–2016) | British | "for their discovery of fullerenes" | |
| 1996 | | Richard E. Smalley (1943–2005) | American | "for their discovery of fullerenes" | |
| 1997 | | Paul D. Boyer (1918–2018) | American | "for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" | |
| 1997 | | John E. Walker (b. 1941) | British | "for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" | |
| 1997 | | Jens C. Skou (1918–2018) | Danish | "for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na$^+$, K$^+$ -ATPase" | |
| 1998 | | Walter Kohn (1923–2016) | Austrian American | "for his development of the density-functional theory" | |
| 1998 | | John A. Pople (1925–2004) | British | "for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry" | |
| 1999 | | Ahmed Zewail (1946–2016) | Egyptian American | "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy" | |
| 2000 | | Alan J. Heeger (b. 1936) | American | "for their discovery and development of conductive polymers" | |
| 2000 | | Alan G. MacDiarmid (1927–2007) | New Zealander American | "for their discovery and development of conductive polymers" | |
| 2000 | | Hideki Shirakawa (b. 1936) | Japanese | "for their discovery and development of conductive polymers" | |
| 2001 | | William S. Knowles (1917–2012) | American | "for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions" | |
| 2001 | | Ryōji Noyori (b. 1938) | Japanese | "for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions" | |
| 2001 | | K. Barry Sharpless (b. 1941) | American | "for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions" | |
| 2002 | | John B. Fenn (1917–2010) | American | "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules [...] for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" | |
| 2002 | | Koichi Tanaka (b. 1959) | Japanese | "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules [...] for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" | |
| 2002 | | Kurt Wüthrich (b. 1938) | Swiss | "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules [...] for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution" | |
| 2003 | | Peter Agre (b. 1949) | American | "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes [...] for the discovery of water channels" | |
| 2003 | | Roderick MacKinnon (b. 1956) | American | "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes [...] for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels" | |
| 2004 | | Aaron Ciechanover (b. 1947) | Israeli | "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation" | |
| 2004 | | Avram Hershko (b. 1937) | Israeli | "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation" | |
| 2004 | | Irwin Rose (1926–2015) | American | "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation" | |
| 2005 | | Yves Chauvin (1930–2015) | French | "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis" | |
| 2005 | | Robert H. Grubbs (1942–2021) | American | "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis" | |
| 2005 | | Richard R. Schrock (b. 1945) | American | "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis" | |
| 2006 | | Roger D. Kornberg (b. 1947) | American | "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription" | |
| 2007 | | Gerhard Ertl (b. 1936) | German | "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces" | |
| 2008 | | Osamu Shimomura (1928–2018) | Japanese | "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" | |
| 2008 | | Martin Chalfie (b. 1947) | American | "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" | |
| 2008 | | Roger Y. Tsien (1952–2016) | American | "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" | |
| 2009 | | Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (b. 1952) | British American | "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome" | |
| 2009 | | Thomas A. Steitz (1940–2018) | American | "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome" | |
| 2009 | | Ada E. Yonath (b. 1939) | Israeli | "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome" | |
| 2010 | | Richard F. Heck (1931–2015) | American | "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis" | |
| 2010 | | Ei-ichi Negishi (1935–2021) | Japanese | "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis" | |
| 2010 | | Akira Suzuki (b. 1930) | Japanese | "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis" | |
| 2011 | | Dan Shechtman (b. 1941) | Israeli American | "for the discovery of quasicrystals" | |
| 2012 | | Robert Lefkowitz (b. 1943) | American | "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors" | |
| 2012 | | Brian Kobilka (b. 1955) | American | "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors" | |
| 2013 | | Martin Karplus (1930–2024) | Austrian American | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" | |
| 2013 | | Michael Levitt (b. 1947) | South African American British Israeli | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" | |
| 2013 | | Arieh Warshel (b. 1940) | Israeli American | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" | |
| 2014 | | Eric Betzig (b. 1960) | American | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" | |
| 2014 | | Stefan W. Hell (b. 1962) | Romanian German | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" | |
| 2014 | | William E. Moerner (b. 1953) | American | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" | |
| 2015 | | Tomas Lindahl (b. 1938) | Swedish British | "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" | |
| 2015 | | Paul L. Modrich (b. 1946) | American | "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" | |
| 2015 | | Aziz Sancar (b. 1946) | Turkish | "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" | |
| 2016 | | Jean-Pierre Sauvage (b. 1944) | French | "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines" | |
| 2016 | | Fraser Stoddart (1942–2024) | British American | "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines" | |
| 2016 | | Ben Feringa (b. 1951) | Dutch | "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines" | |
| 2017 | | Jacques Dubochet (b. 1942) | Swiss | "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" | |
| 2017 | | Joachim Frank (b. 1940) | German American | "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" | |
| 2017 | | Richard Henderson (b. 1945) | British | "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" | |
| 2018 | | Frances Arnold (b. 1956) | American | "for the directed evolution of enzymes" | |
| 2018 | | George Smith (b. 1941) | American | "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies" | |
| 2018 | | Sir Gregory Winter (b. 1951) | British | "for the phage display of peptides and antibodies" | |
| 2019 | | John B. Goodenough (1922–2023) | American | "for the development of lithium ion batteries" | |
| 2019 | | M. Stanley Whittingham (b. 1941) | British American | "for the development of lithium ion batteries" | |
| 2019 | | Akira Yoshino (b. 1948) | Japanese | "for the development of lithium ion batteries" | |
| 2020 | | Emmanuelle Charpentier (b. 1968) | French | "for the development of a method for genome editing" | |
| 2020 | | Jennifer Doudna (b. 1964) | American | "for the development of a method for genome editing" | |
| 2021 | | Benjamin List (b. 1968) | German | "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis" | |
| 2021 | | David W.C. MacMillan (b. 1968) | British | "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis" | |
| 2022 | | Carolyn Bertozzi (b. 1966) | American | "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry" | |
| 2022 | | Morten Meldal (b. 1954) | Danish | "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry" | |
| 2022 | | K. Barry Sharpless (b. 1941) | American | "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry" | |
| 2023 | | Moungi G. Bawendi (b. 1961) | French Tunisian American | "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots" | |
| 2023 | | Louis E. Brus (b. 1943) | American | "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots" | |
| 2023 | | Alexey Ekimov (b. 1945) | Russian | "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots" | |
| 2024 | | David Baker (b. 1962) | American | "for computational protein design" | |
| 2024 | | Demis Hassabis (b. 1976) | British | “for protein structure prediction” | |
| 2024 | | John M. Jumper (b. 1985) | American | “for protein structure prediction” | |