Sir William Ramsey - Nobel
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry is presented to the person or persons who has made the most important chemical discovery or improvement, as chosen by the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, as elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Each winner receives a Nobel Prize Diploma, a Nobel Prize Medal and a substantial amount of money.
The First Five Chemistry Nobel Prizes
The first five Nobel Prize for Chemistry were:
- 1901: Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff
- 1902: Hermann Emil Fischer
- 1903: Svante August Arrhenius
- 1904: Sir William Ramsey
- 1905: Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer
Jacobus van't Hoff
The first winner, Jacobus H. van't Hoff, received the prize for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions. This Dutch chemist, who was Honorary Professor at Berlin University at the time of the award, made significant breakthroughs in physical chemistry, and in particular in the thermodynamic equilibrium in chemical reactions.
Hermann Emil Fischer
Emil Fischer, also from Berlin University in Germany, was a German organic chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on sugar and purine syntheses. He showed that various naturally-occurring substances, including adenine, caffeine and uric acid all had a similar structure, based on purine. He went on to synthesise the sugars, glucose, fructose and mannose from glycerol.
Svante August Arrhenius
Swedish chemist, Arrhenius, was based at Stockholm University when he received the Nobel Prize for his electrolytic theory of dissociation. His work suggested the theory that electrolytes, when dissolved in water, split into charge carrying ions, which were carriers of electric current and also of chemical activity. This observation transformed the study of chemistry.
Sir William Ramsey
Scottish Chemist, William Ramsey, began as an organic chemist, going on to make contributions to the study of physical chemistry as well. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1904, however, for his discovery of the inert gases in air, and for determining their place in the periodic table. He announced the discovery of the noble gas, argon, in 1894, alongside Lard Rayleigh (winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics 1904), and went on to discover helium, neon, krypton and xenon, placing them together in a new group in the periodic table.
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer
Von Baeyer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1905 for his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds. He worked on the blue dye named indigo, discovered indole and partially synthesised indigotin. After being appointed Professor of Chemistry at Munich University in 1873, he developed a synthesis of indigo itself and went on to work on carbon rings, an important aspect of organic chemistry.
Source:
The Official Website of the Nobel Prize: Nobelprize.org
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