Svante Arrhenius
1859–1927
Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) showed that salts, acids and bases split into ions in water, gave us the Arrhenius equation and won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The people behind the chemistry
Chemist Profiles
The lives and work of chemists who changed the subject: their key contributions and discoveries, and the prizes they won, all with dates.
Ernest Rutherford
1871–1937
Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) named alpha and beta radiation, showed that radioactive elements transform into others and discovered the atomic nucleus. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1908.
Marie Curie
1867–1934
Marie Curie (1867–1934) discovered polonium and radium, coined the word radioactivity and won Nobel Prizes in both physics (1903) and chemistry (1911).
Fritz Haber
1868–1934
Fritz Haber (1868–1934) made ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, the basis of modern fertilizers, and won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He also led Germany's chemical weapons programme.
Linus Pauling
1901–1994
Linus Pauling (1901–1994) explained chemical bonding with quantum mechanics, created the electronegativity scale and won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize.
Frederick Sanger
1918–2013
Frederick Sanger (1918–2013) determined the amino acid sequence of insulin and invented the main method for reading DNA, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1958 and again in 1980.
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
1910–1994
Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994) used X-ray crystallography to solve the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin, and won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Robert Burns Woodward
1917–1979
Robert Burns Woodward (1917–1979) turned organic synthesis into an art, making quinine, cholesterol, chlorophyll and vitamin B12, and won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Ahmed Zewail
1946–2016
Ahmed Zewail (1946–2016) used laser pulses lasting femtoseconds to film molecules during a reaction, founding femtochemistry and winning the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Tu Youyou
born 1930
Tu Youyou (born 1930) led the team that discovered artemisinin in 1971–1972, inspired by an ancient Chinese text, and won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Frances Arnold
born 1956
Frances Arnold (born 1956) pioneered the directed evolution of enzymes, making new catalysts for medicines and fuels, and won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.