Wolf Prize in Chemistry

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The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Arts. The Prize is often considered the most prestigious award in chemistry after the Nobel Prize[1].

[edit] Laureates[2]

Year Name Nationality Citation
1978 Carl Djerassi Flag of the United States United States for his work in bioorganic chemistry, application of new spectroscopic techniques, and his support of international cooperation.
1979 Herman Mark Flag of Austria Austria / Flag of the United States United States for his contributions to understanding the structure and behavior of natural and synthetic polymers.
1980 Henry Eyring Flag of Mexico Mexico / Flag of the United States United States for his development of absolute rate theory and its imaginative applications to chemical and physical processes.
1981 Joseph Chatt Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom for pioneering and fundamental contributions to synthetic transition metal chemistry, particularly transition metal hydrides and dinitrogen complexes.
1982 John Charles Polanyi Flag of Canada Canada for his studies of chemical reactions in unprecedented detail by developing the infrared chemiluminiscence technique, and for envisaging the chemical laser.
George C. Pimentel Flag of the United States United States for development of matrix isolation spectroscopy and for the discovery of photodissociation lasers and chemical lasers.
1983/4 Herbert S. Gutowsky Flag of the United States United States for his pioneering work in the development and applications of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in chemistry.
Harden M. McConnell Flag of the United States United States for his studies of the electronic structure of molecules through paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and for the introduction and biological applications of spin label techniques.
John S. Waugh Flag of the United States United States for his fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in solids.
1984/5 Rudolph A. Marcus Flag of Canada Canada / Flag of the United States United States for his contributions to chemical kinetics, especially the theories of unimolecular reactions and electron transfer reactions.
1986 Elias James Corey Flag of the United States United States for outstanding research on the synthesis of many highly complex natural products and the demonstration of novel ways of thinking about such syntheses.
Albert Eschenmoser Flag of Switzerland Switzerland for outstanding research on the synthesis, stereochemistry and reaction mechanisms for formation of natural products, especially Vitamin-B12.
1987 David C. Phillips
David M. Blow
Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
for their contributions to protein X-ray crystallography and to the elucidation of structures of enzymes and their mechanisms of action.
1988 Joshua Jortner
Raphael David Levine
Flag of Israel Israel
Flag of Israel Israel
for their incisive theoretical studies elucidating energy acquisition and disposal in molecular systems and mechanisms for dynamical selectivity and specificity.
1989 Duilio Arigoni
Alan R. Battersby
Flag of Switzerland Switzerland
Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
for their fundamental contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of enzymic reactions and of the biosynthesis of natural products, in particular the pigments of life.
1990 No award
1991 Richard R. Ernst Flag of Switzerland Switzerland for his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially Fourier-transform and two-dimensional NMR
Alexander Pines Flag of Rhodesia Rhodesia / Flag of the United States United States for his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially multiple-quantum and high-spin NMR.
1992 John Pople Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom for his outstanding contributions to theoretical chemistry, particularly in developing effective and widely used modern quantum- chemical methods.
1993 Ahmed Hassam Zewail Flag of Egypt Egypt / Flag of the United States United States for pioneering the development of laser femtochemistry. Using lasers and molecular beams, femtochemistry has made it now possible to probe the evolution of chemical reactions as they actually happen in real time.
1994/5 Richard Lerner
Peter Schultz
Flag of the United States United States
Flag of the United States United States
for converting antibodies into enzymes, thus permitting the catalysis of chemical reactions considered impossible to achieve by classical chemical procedures.
1995/6 Gilbert Stork
Samuel J. Danishefsky
Flag of the United States United States
Flag of the United States United States
for designing and developing novel chemical reactions which have opened new avenues to the synthesis of complex molecules, particularly polysaccharides and many other biologically and medicinally important compounds.
1996/7 No award
1998 Gerhard Ertl
Gabor A. Somorjai
Flag of Germany Germany
Flag of Hungary Hungary
for their outstanding contributions to the field of the surface science in general, and for their elucidation of fundamental mechanisms of heterogeneous catalytic reactions at single crystal surfaces in particular.
1999 Raymond U. Lemieux Flag of Canada Canada for his fundamental and seminal contributions to the study and synthesis of oligosaccharides and to the elucidation of their role in molecular recognition in biological systems.
2000 Frank Albert Cotton Flag of the United States United States for opening up an entirely new phase of transition metal chemistry based on pairs and clusters of metal atoms directly linked by single or multiple bonds.
2001 Henri B. Kagan
Ryoji Noyori
K. Barry Sharpless
Flag of France France
Flag of Japan Japan
Flag of the United States United States
for their pioneering, creative and crucial work in developing asymmetric catalysis for the synthesis of chiral molecules, greatly increasing mankind's ability to create new products of fundamental and practical importance.
2002/3 No award
2004 Harry B. Gray Flag of the United States United States for pioneering work in bio-inorganic chemistry, unravelling novel principles of structure and long-range electron transfer in proteins.
2005 Richard N. Zare Flag of the United States United States for his ingenious applications of laser techniques, for identifying complex mechanisms in molecules, and their use in analytical chemistry.
2006/7 Ada Yonath
George Feher
Flag of Israel Israel
Flag of the United States United States
for ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis.
2008 William E. Moerner
Allen J. Bard
Flag of the United States United States
Flag of the United States United States
for the ingenious creation of a new field of science, single molecule spectroscopy and electrochemistry, with impact at the nanoscopic regime, from the molecular and cellular domain to complex material systems.


[edit] References

  1. ^ Basolo, F: "From Coello to Inorganic Chemistry: A Lifetime of Reactions", page 65, Springer, 2002
  2. ^ Wolf Prize Recipients in Chemistry