Nobel Prizes

Scientific discoveries recognised by Nobel Prizes.

People in Nobel Prizes

76 profiles

Scientist

Marie Curie

Discovering polonium and radium.

Physicist

Albert Einstein

Developing the theory of relativity.

Physicist

Pierre Curie

Discovering polonium and radium with Marie Curie.

Physicist

C. V. Raman

Discovering how scattered light reveals the molecules it meets.

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

Glenn T. Seaborg

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

Neuroscientist

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Establishing that the nervous system is built from individual cells.

Physicist

John Bardeen

Co-inventing the transistor and helping explain superconductivity.

Geneticist

Barbara McClintock

Discovering mobile genetic elements, often called jumping genes.

Scientist

Irène Joliot-Curie

Discovering artificial radioactivity with Frédéric Joliot-Curie.

Physicist

Enrico Fermi

Leading the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

Physicist

Niels Bohr

Explaining atomic energy levels and helping establish quantum physics.

Physicist

Abdus Salam

Helping develop electroweak theory, which connects two fundamental forces.

Biologist

Yoshinori Ohsumi

Revealing how cells dismantle and recycle their own components through autophagy.

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.

Physicist

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Discovering the mass limit beyond which a white dwarf cannot support itself.

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.

Geneticist

Svante Pääbo

Recovering ancient human DNA and revealing our genetic connections with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Physicist

Max Planck

Introducing energy quanta and helping launch quantum physics.

Physicist

Werner Heisenberg

Formulating matrix mechanics and the uncertainty principle.

Physicist

Erwin Schrödinger

Developing the wave equation at the heart of quantum mechanics.

Physicist

Paul Dirac

Developing a relativistic equation for the electron that pointed towards antimatter.

Physicist

Richard Feynman

Developing quantum electrodynamics tools and explaining physics with unusual clarity.

Physicist

Chen Ning Yang

Challenging mirror symmetry in particle physics and co-developing Yang–Mills theory.

Physicist

Tsung-Dao Lee

Helping reveal that weak interactions do not obey mirror symmetry.

Physicist

Peter Higgs

Proposing a mechanism that helps explain how elementary particles acquire mass.

Biochemist

Har Gobind Khorana

Helping decipher how the genetic code specifies proteins.

Biochemist

Luis Federico Leloir

Discovering how sugar nucleotides help cells build carbohydrates.

Chemist

Mario Molina

Showing how CFC gases threaten the ozone layer.

Physicist

Donna Strickland

Developing a method for producing extremely intense, short laser pulses.

Physicist

Ernest Rutherford

Revealing the tiny nucleus at the centre of the atom.

Physicist

Max Born

Explaining quantum waves in terms of probability.

Physicist

Wolfgang Pauli

Formulating the exclusion principle that helps explain atomic structure.

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.

Neuroscientist

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Discovering nerve growth factor, a signal that supports nerve cells.

Biologist

Shinya Yamanaka

Reprogramming adult cells into stem cells.

Neuroscientist

May-Britt Moser

Discovering grid cells that help the brain map space.

Neuroscientist

Edvard Moser

Co-discovering the grid cells used in the brain’s spatial navigation.

Physicist

John Clauser

Testing quantum entanglement in experiments that challenged classical ideas about reality.

Physicist

William Henry Bragg

Developing X-ray crystallography with his son, revealing how atoms are arranged in crystals.

Physicist

Isidor Rabi

Developing a resonance method for measuring atomic nuclei’s magnetic properties.

Physicist

Louis de Broglie

Proposing that particles of matter also behave as waves.

Chemist

Robert Burns Woodward

Constructing complex natural molecules through planned chemical synthesis.

Physicist

Reinhard Genzel

Tracking stars that revealed a supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s centre.

Chemist

Karl Barry Sharpless

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

Physicist

Rainer Weiss

Helping design LIGO, which detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes.

Chemist

Louis E. Brus

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

Physicist

Alain Aspect

Testing quantum entanglement with landmark experiments using photons.

Scientist

John B. Goodenough

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

Physicist

Anton Zeilinger

Testing quantum entanglement and pioneering the transfer of quantum information.

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.

Physicist

Ferenc Krausz

Generating isolated attosecond light pulses to investigate electrons in motion.

Biologist

Martin Chalfie

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

Physicist

Pierre Agostini

Developing attosecond light-pulse methods that made electron motion accessible to experiment.

Physicist

Hans Bethe

Explaining the nuclear reactions that power stars.

Physicist

Lev Landau

Explaining superfluid helium and building influential theories of matter.

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

Eduard Buchner

Demonstrating that fermentation can occur without living yeast cells.

Chemist

Ilya Prigogine

Explaining ordered structures in systems far from equilibrium.

Physicist

Julius von Mayer

Helping establish the principle of conservation of energy.

Scientist

Jacques Dubochet

Developing methods for cryo-electron microscopy.

Chemist

Jean-Pierre Sauvage

Developing mechanically interlocked molecules for molecular machines.

Biochemist

Aziz Sancar

Explaining how cells repair damaged DNA.