Chemistry

Substances and how they change.

People in Chemistry

79 profiles

Scientist

Marie Curie

Discovering polonium and radium.

Chemist

Rosalind Franklin

Producing crucial X-ray evidence for DNA’s structure.

Chemist

Linus Pauling

Explaining chemical bonds and winning separate Nobel Prizes for chemistry and peace.

Chemist

Otto Hahn

Finding chemical evidence that uranium nuclei can split.

Chemist

Percy Julian

Synthesising medicinal compounds and developing industrial chemistry from soybeans.

Chemist

Glenn T. Seaborg

Helping discover transuranium elements and reorganising the periodic table’s actinide series.

Scientist

Irène Joliot-Curie

Discovering artificial radioactivity with Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

Scientist

Michael Faraday

Discovering electromagnetic induction, the basis of electric generators.

Microbiologist

Louis Pasteur

Explaining microbial fermentation, developing pasteurisation and advancing vaccination.

Chemist

Ahmed Zewail

Using ultrafast laser pulses to observe chemical bonds breaking and forming.

Biologist

Venki Ramakrishnan

Mapping the ribosome, the molecular machinery that builds proteins.

Chemist

Dorothy Hodgkin

Using X-rays to reveal the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin.

Biochemist

Jennifer Doudna

Co-developing CRISPR-Cas9 as a programmable tool for editing DNA.

Microbiologist

Emmanuelle Charpentier

Co-developing CRISPR-Cas9 as a programmable method for editing DNA.

Chemist

Ada Yonath

Revealing the structure of the ribosome, the cell’s protein-making machinery.

Chemist

Frances Arnold

Using directed evolution to engineer useful enzymes.

Chemist

Alice Ball

Developing an injectable chaulmoogra-oil treatment for Hansen’s disease.

Chemist

Lloyd Quarterman

Contributing fluorine chemistry to the Manhattan Project and later nuclear research.

Chemist

Carolyn Bertozzi

Developing chemical reactions that can work inside living systems without disrupting their normal chemistry.

Chemist

Moungi Bawendi

Developing a practical way to make high-quality quantum dots, tiny crystals with size-dependent colours.

Chemist

Dmitri Mendeleev

Creating a periodic table that predicted the properties of elements before they were discovered.

Chemist

Antoine Lavoisier

Transforming chemistry through precise measurement and explaining combustion in terms of oxygen.

Chemist

Akira Yoshino

The chemist who developed a practical lithium-ion battery without a reactive lithium-metal anode.

Engineer

Koichi Tanaka

The engineer whose soft laser-desorption method helped scientists analyse large biological molecules.

Chemist

Osamu Shimomura

Discovering green fluorescent protein, later transformed into a tool for seeing processes inside cells.

Chemist

Robert Burns Woodward

Constructing complex natural molecules through planned chemical synthesis.

Chemist

Karl Barry Sharpless

Developing selective chemical reactions and click chemistry, earning two chemistry Nobel Prizes.

Chemist

Louis E. Brus

Discovering how the size of tiny semiconductor crystals changes their properties.

Scientist

John B. Goodenough

Developing materials that made powerful rechargeable lithium-ion batteries possible.

Chemist

Morten Meldal

Co-developing copper-catalysed click chemistry, a reliable way to join molecular building blocks.

Chemist

Roger Y. Tsien

Turning fluorescent proteins into tools for watching processes inside living cells.

Biologist

Martin Chalfie

Showing how green fluorescent protein could mark living cells for scientific study.

Scientist

Robert Boyle

Formulating Boyle’s law and helping make chemistry an experimental science.

Chemist

John Dalton

Developing an atomic theory that explained how elements combine in fixed proportions.

Scientist

Amedeo Avogadro

Explaining why equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of molecules.

Scientist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius

Developing the chemical symbols and atomic measurements used to describe matter.

Scientist

August Kekulé

Proposing the ring structure of benzene.

Chemist

Friedrich Wöhler

Synthesising urea from inorganic starting materials in 1828.

Chemist

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff

Helping establish stereochemistry and winning the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Chemist

Svante Arrhenius

Explaining ions in solution and calculating an early link between carbon dioxide and climate.

Chemist

Fritz Haber

Developing ammonia synthesis and directing Germany’s First World War poison-gas programme.

Chemist

Carl Bosch

Turning ammonia synthesis into an industrial process.

Chemist

Hermann Staudinger

Establishing that polymers are long chains of chemically bonded units.

Chemist

Giulio Natta

Developing stereospecific polymerisation and isotactic polypropylene.

Chemist

Karl Ziegler

Discovering catalysts that made high-density polyethylene possible at low pressure.

Chemist

Roald Hoffmann

Explaining chemical reactions through orbital symmetry.

Chemist

Kurt Wüthrich

Using NMR to determine protein structures in solution.

Biochemist

Jens Christian Skou

Discovering the sodium-potassium pump enzyme.

Biochemist

Hartmut Michel

Determining the structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre.

Chemist

Justus von Liebig

Transforming laboratory teaching and agricultural chemistry.

Chemist

Jaroslav Heyrovský

Inventing polarography for chemical analysis.

Biochemist

Avram Hershko

Discovering how ubiquitin marks proteins for destruction.

Chemist

George de Hevesy

Developing radioactive tracers and co-discovering hafnium.

Chemist

Ben Feringa

Building molecular motors that turn in a controlled direction.

Chemist

Richard Willstätter

Determining the chemistry of chlorophyll and other plant pigments.

Chemist

Heinrich Otto Wieland

Investigating the chemical structure of bile acids.

Chemist

John Cornforth

Explaining the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions.

Chemist

Theodor Svedberg

Developing the ultracentrifuge for studying colloids and proteins.

Chemist

Adolf von Baeyer

Synthesising indigo and investigating organic dyes.

Chemist

Hans Fischer

Determining the chemistry of biological pigments and synthesising haemin.

Chemist

Wilhelm Ostwald

Advancing physical chemistry and the study of catalysis.

Chemist

Charles Hatchett

Discovering the element now called niobium.

Chemist

William Crookes

Discovering thallium and investigating electrical discharges in vacuum tubes

Chemist

Gerhard Ertl

Explaining chemical reactions on solid surfaces

Chemist

Adolf Windaus

Research on sterols and vitamin D

Chemist

Joseph Priestley

Independently isolating oxygen and experimenting with gases

Biochemist

Richard Laurence Millington Synge

Co-developing partition chromatography

Biochemist

Peter D. Mitchell

The chemiosmotic explanation of cellular energy production

Chemist

Georg Wittig

Developing the Wittig reaction for building carbon–carbon double bonds.

Biochemist

Alec Todd

Determining the chemistry of nucleotides and their coenzymes.

Physicist

Gerhard Herzberg

Using spectroscopy to reveal molecular structure.

Chemist

Victor Grignard

Discovering organomagnesium reagents used to build carbon–carbon bonds.

Chemist

Richard Robson

Designing extended molecular frameworks with open spaces.

Chemist

Alan Fersht

Protein engineering and the chemistry of folding.

Chemist

Alfred Werner

Explaining the three-dimensional structure of coordination compounds.

Chemist

Otto Diels

The Diels–Alder reaction for building carbon rings.

Chemist

George Porter

Using flash photolysis to study fleeting chemical reactions.

Chemist

Richard R. Ernst

Methods that transformed nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Chemist

John E. Walker

Revealing the structure of ATP-producing molecular machinery.