List of Nobel Prize in Chemistry Winners

Recent winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and their research, according to the Nobel Foundation:

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* 2006: American Roger D. Kornberg for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins.

* 2005: France’s Yves Chauvin and Americans Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock, for their work and exploration of metathesis.

* 2004: Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, Israel, and Irwin Rose, United States, for their work in how cells break down.

* 2003: Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon, United States, for their research on how key materials enter or leave cells in the body and their discoveries concerning tiny pores called “channels” on the surface of cells.

* 2002: John B. Fenn, United States, Koichi Tanaka, Japan, and Kurt Wuethrich, Switzerland, for developing methods used in identifying and analyzing large biological molecules.

* 2001: William S. Knowles and K. Barry Sharpless, United States, and Ryoji Noyori, Japan, for showing how to better control chemical reactions, paving the way for drugs to treat heart ailments and Parkinson’s disease.

* 2000: Alan J. Heeger and Alan G. MacDiarmid, United States, and Hideki Shirakawa, Japan, for the discovery that plastic conducts electricity and for the development of conductive polymers.

* 1999: Ahmed H. Zewail, United States, for pioneering the investigation of fundamental chemical reactions, using ultra-short laser flashes, on the time scale on which the reactions actually occur.

* 1998: Walter Kohn, United States, for the development of density-functional theory in the 1960s that simplifies the mathematical description of the bonding between atoms that make up molecules, and John Pople, Britain, for developing computer techniques to test the chemical structure and details of matter.

* 1997: Paul D. Boyer, United States, John E. Walker, Britain, and Jens C. Skou, Denmark, for their work on how the body’s cells store and transfer energy.

* 1996: Harold W. Kroto, Britain, and Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley, United States, for their discovery of “buckyballs,” a type of soccer ball-shaped carbon molecule.

* 1995: Paul Crutzen, Netherlands, and Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, United States, for their work on the formation and decomposition of the ozone layer.

* 1994: George A. Olah, United States, for his contributions to carbocation chemistry.

* 1993: Kary B. Mullis, United States, and Michael Smith, Canada, for developing two new methods that led to decisive progress in gene technology.

* 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus, United States, for contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems.

* 1991: Richard R. Ernst, Switzerland, for contributions to the development of the high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, spectroscopy.

* 1990: Elias James Corey, United States, for developing the theory and methodology of organic synthesis.

* 1989: Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman, United States, for showing independently that RNA, once thought to be merely a genetic messenger, could actively aid chemical reactions.

* 1988: Johann Diesenhofer, Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel, West Germany, for determining the structure of certain proteins needed in photosynthesis.

* 1987: Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Pedersen, United States, and Jean-Marie Lehn, France, for the synthesis of molecules that mimic important biological processes.

* 1986: Dudley R. Herschbach and Yuan T. Lee, United States, and John C. Polanyi, Canada, for research showing how basic chemical reactions take place.

* 1985: Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle, United States, for developing methods to determine the molecular structure of crystals.

* 1984: Robert Bruce Merrifield, United States, for the development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix.

* 1983: Henry Taube, United States, for work in explaining chemical reactions in everything from photosynthesis in plants to batteries and fuel cells.

* 1982: Aaron Klug, Britain, for work on the structure of genes.

* 1981: Kenichi Fukui, Japan, and Roald Hoffmann, United States, for work in theoretical chemistry in anticipating the course of chemical reactions.

* 1980: Paul Berg, United States, for fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids; and Walter Gilbert, United States, and Frederick Sanger, Britain, for contributions concerning the base sequences in nucleic acids.