(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Song Jin-won = This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded to French scholar Henri Cagan (95) and Japanese scholar Soai Kenso (76).
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' Nobel Committee announced on the 7th (local time) that it had selected these two people as winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded a total of 118 times from 1901 to this year. There were a total of eight cases in which a winner was not produced due to reasons such as World War I and World War II.
Since Jacobus Henriquis Vanthof of the Netherlands, who became the first winner for his discovery of the principle of osmosis, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to 202 people so far this year.
Two people, including British biochemist Frederick Sanger (awarded in 1958 and 1980) and American K. Barry Sharpless (awarded in 2001 and 2022), have received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice, bringing the total number of recipients to 200.
There are a total of 8 female awardees.
Marie Curie won the prize alone in 1911, becoming the first female Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. It was her second Nobel Prize in Physics, after receiving it with her husband, Pierre Curie, in 1903 for their discovery of radium and polonium.
The couple's daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, also followed in her mother's footsteps and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Her husband, Frederick Joliot, co-winner, was 35 years old at the time and was the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The oldest recipient was John Goodenough, who was recognized for his contribution to the development of lithium-ion batteries and was 97 years old when he received the award in 2019. Goodenough, who was also the oldest Nobel Prize winner ever, passed away in 2023 at the age of 100.
There are also cases where awards were delayed due to pressure from the government.
During Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler banned Germans from receiving the Nobel Prize. Accordingly, Richard Kuhn (1938), who was recognized for his contribution to the study of carotenoids and vitamins, and Adolf Butenand (1939), who contributed to the study of sex hormones, could not receive the award at the time. They received their certificates and medals only after the end of World War II, but they did not receive the prize money because the deadline for receiving the prize money under the Nobel Prize regulations passed.
Until this year, two people have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together a total of 26 times, and three people have won it 29 times.
The following are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners and achievements from 2000 to 2026.
▲ 2026: Henri Cagan (France), Soai Kenso (Japan)
= Discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
▲ 2025: Susumu Kitagawa (Japan), Richard Robson (born in England), Omar M. Yagi (born in Jordan)
= Development of metal-organic framework.
▲ 2024: David Baker (USA), Demis Hassabis (UK), John Jumper (USA)
= Development of protein design program and protein structure prediction AI model
▲ 2023: Munji G. Bawendi (France), Louis E. Bruce (USA), Alexei I. Yekimov (former Soviet Union)
= Contributing to the development of nanotechnology through the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.
▲ 2022: Caroline R. Bertozzi (USA), Morten Meldahl (Denmark), K. Barry Sharpless (USA)
= Research in the field of ‘click/bioorthogonal chemistry’ that elicits selective molecular binding reactions.
▲ 2021: Benjamin List (Germany), David McMillan (USA)
= Development of asymmetric organic catalyst reaction
▲ 2020: Emmanuel Charpentier (France), Jennifer A. Doudna (USA)
= Development of genome editing techniques.
▲ 2019: John Goodenough (USA), Stanley Whittingham (UK), Akira Yoshino (Japan)
= Contributes to the development of lithium-ion batteries.
▲ 2018: Francis Arnold (USA)
= Study of directed evolution of enzymes.
George P. Smith (USA), Gregory P. Winter (UK)
= Phage display study of antibodies and peptides.
▲ 2017: Jacques Dubochet (France), Joachim Frank (USA), Richard Henderson (UK)
= Development of a high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy observation method to determine the structure of biomolecules in solution
▲ 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage (France), Fraser Stothert (England), Berinart Ferringha (Netherlands)
= Design and manufacture molecular machines.
▲ 2015: Thomas Lindahl (Sweden), Paul Modric (USA), Aziz Sanjar (USA, Turkey)
= Study of DNA (gene) repair mechanism.
▲ 2014: Eric Betzig, William E. Merner (USA), Stefan W. Hell (Germany)
= Development of ultra-high resolution fluorescence microscopy technology.
▲ 2013: Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, Ari Warshall (USA)
= Laying the foundation for multiscale modeling for complex analysis.
▲ 2012: Robert J. Lefkowitz, Brian K. Kobylka (USA)
= Research on ‘G protein-coupled receptors’ (GPCR), which are involved in cardiovascular diseases and brain diseases.
▲ 2011: Daniel Shechtman (Israel)
= Credit for discovering quasicrystals.
▲ 2010: Richard F. Heck (USA), Eiichi Negishi, Akira Suzuki (Japan)
= Research on complex organic compound synthesis technology using metal catalysts
▲ 2009: Ada Yonat (Israel), Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz (USA)
= Study of the structure and function of ribosomes in cells.
▲ 2008: Martin Schalpy, Roger Cian (USA), Osamu Shimomura (Japan)
= Discovery and application research of green fluorescent protein.
▲ 2007: Gerhard Ertl (Germany)
= Contributes to understanding the causes of iron rusting, how fuel cells function, and how automobile catalysts work.
▲ 2006: Roger D. Kornberg (USA)
= Identifying the process by which genetic information in eukaryotes is copied and transmitted at the molecular level.
▲ 2005: Robert Grubbs. Richard Schrock (USA), Yves Chauvin (France)
=Contribution to the development of metathesis methods for organic synthesis.
▲ 2004: Aaron Chicanover, Abram Hershko (Israel), Erwin Rose (USA)
= Identifying the protein decomposition process and contributing to the treatment of incurable diseases.
▲ 2003: Peter Ager, Roderick Merkinan (USA).
= Discovery of water and ion channels within cell membranes, and identification of the phenomenon of water and ions flowing through human cells.
▲ 2002: John Penn (USA), Koichi Tanaka (Japan), Kurt Butrich (Switzerland).
= Developing a method to determine the mass and three-dimensional structure of protein molecules that make up the body of a living organism.
▲ 2001: William S. Knowles, K. Barry Sharpless (USA), Ryoji Noyori (Japan).
= Developed an optically active catalyst that can synthesize only one of the optical isomers in a chemical reaction, contributing to the development of treatments for heart disease, Parkinson's disease, etc.
▲ 2000: Alan Heeger, Alan McDermid (USA), Hideki Shirakawa (Japan).
= Proved that plastic can conduct electricity like metal and actually invented a conductive polymer.
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