The Karolinska Institutet, Sweden’s Nobel Assembly has announced this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, according to which Benjamin List of Germany and David Macmillan of the United States have been jointly awarded the discovery of a chemical process called “asymmetric organocatalysis”. Has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
It is a completely new process of catalysis that has made it possible to make new compounds, ranging from new drugs to compounds that produce electricity better from sunlight.
In the 1990s, Bijman List and David Macmillan discovered the process of organocatalysis at about the same time, separately from each other, for which they were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The money will be divided equally among them.
It should be noted that the amount of the Nobel Prize in each category this year is 1.14 million dollars (about 195.1 million Pakistani rupees).
Nobel Prizes in Chemistry: Some Interesting Historical Information
From 1901 to 2020, there have been 112 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. During the First and Second World Wars, there were eight years in which no Nobel Prize was awarded. No Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were awarded in 1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, 1941, and 1942.
In those 120 years, a total of 185 people have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, of which Frederick Singer was the only chemist to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice (in 1958 and 1980).
Of these, 63 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were awarded to each scientist (without participation); 24 prizes jointly to two experts; Three researchers have been nominated for the 25 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry.
According to the constitution of the Nobel Assembly, no single Nobel Prize can be awarded to more than three persons.
So far 7 women have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. And that number is higher than any other field of science.
Two of the Nobel laureates in chemistry (Marie Curie and Dorothy Kroft Hodgkin) also won the Nobel Prize without participation.
By 2019, the average age of Nobel laureates in chemistry has been 58 years and about five months.
The youngest Nobel Prize-winning scientist in chemistry was Frederick Juliet, who at the age of 35 was jointly awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wife. His wife was Irene Juliet Curie, daughter of the famous female scientist Marie Curie.
The oldest scientist in the same category is John B. Godin, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 at the age of 97. He is also the oldest scientist to win a Nobel Prize in any category.
By the way, there are three names of Nobel laureates in chemistry who have won the Nobel Prize twice in their lives, but Frederick Singer is the only scientist who has been awarded the Nobel Prize twice in the field of chemistry. Marie Curie and Lens Pauling have also been awarded the Nobel Prize twice, but Marie Curie was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics and the second in Chemistry. Similarly, Lens Pauling was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the second in the field of peace.
The Nobel Prize is awarded only to living people, meaning no one can be nominated for it.
In 1974, the Nobel Foundation decided to amend the constitution so that no one would be awarded the Nobel Prize posthumously. But if the person concerned dies after the announcement of the Nobel Prize, that Nobel Prize will remain in his name.
Only two people were posthumously awarded the Nobel Prize before 1974, but no one has been posthumously awarded the Nobel Prize since then.
