Nobel Prize · Curated list
Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, Irène Joliot-Curie and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
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Most written-about first. Each description summarises the laureate's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
Polish-French physicist and chemist (1867–1934)
Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie, a physicist and chemist who was Polish and a naturalised French citizen. The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics went jointly to her and her husband, Pierre Curie, "for their joint researches on the radioactivity phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel".
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
2
New Zealand physicist and chemist (1871–1937)
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, a physicist and chemist from New Zealand who pioneered research in both nuclear and atomic physics. He has been called "the father of nuclear physics" and "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday".
Wikidata · Photo: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress), Public domain
3
French chemist and physicist (1897–1956)
A French physicist and chemist who, with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering induced radioactivity. In the course of that work the couple also discovered positron emission.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
4
American scientist and activist (1901–1994)
Linus Carl Pauling, an American peace activist and chemist. Of the more than 1,200 books and papers he published, about 850 were on scientific subjects.
Wikidata · Photo: US-Gov., Library of Congress, biographical file, Public domain
5
English chemist (1910–1994)
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, an English chemist who refined X-ray crystallography as a means of finding the structure of biomolecules, a technique that became essential to structural biology. She won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and no other British woman scientist has received a Nobel Prize.
Wikidata · Photo: University of Bristol, CC BY-SA 2.0
6
Swedish scientist (1859–1927)
Svante August Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist. A physicist by training, though often called a chemist, he was one of those who founded physical chemistry as a science.
Wikidata · Photo: Photogravure Meisenbach Riffarth & Co. Leipzig., Public domain
7
Dutch physical and organic chemist (1852–1911)
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff Jr., a Dutch physical chemist and a very influential theoretician. In 1901 he won the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry "[for his] discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions".
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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8
German nuclear chemist and Nobel laureate (1879–1968)
A German chemist who pioneered radiochemistry. He is called the father of nuclear chemistry and the discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind both nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
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9
German chemist (1868–1934)
Fritz Jakob Haber, a German chemist awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing the Haber process, an industrial method of making ammonia from hydrogen gas and nitrogen gas. The invention is important for synthesising explosives and fertilisers on a large scale.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
10
Scottish chemist (1852–1916)
Sir William Ramsay, the Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases. He received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air"; in the same year John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, with whom he had worked, received the Nobel Prize in Physics, for their discovery of argon. Once the pair had identified argon, Ramsay went on to study other gases of the atmosphere.
Wikidata · Photo: Elliott & Fry, Public domain
11
German chemist and philosopher (1853–1932)
Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald, a Baltic German philosopher and chemist. Together with Svante Arrhenius, Walther Nernst and Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, he is credited as a founder of physical chemistry.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
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12
German chemist (1852–1919)
Hermann Emil Louis Fischer, a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1902. He discovered the esterification reaction named after him.
13
Israeli chemist (1939–2026)
Ada Esther Yonath, a crystallographer from Israel who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, known above all for pioneering work on how ribosomes are structured. At the Weizmann Institute of Science she directed the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center, devoted to the structure and assembly of biomolecules.
Wikidata · Photo: Hareesh N. Nampoothiri, CC BY-SA 3.0
14
British biochemist (1918–2013)
A British biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry two times.
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15
American biochemist and Nobel laureate (born 1964)
Jennifer Anne Doudna, an American biochemist, a pioneer of gene editing with CRISPR who has also contributed fundamentally to genetics and biochemistry. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2020 was awarded to her and Emmanuelle Charpentier "for the development of a method for genome editing."
Wikidata · Photo: Duncan.Hull, CC BY-SA 4.0
16
English radiochemist (1877–1956)
An English radiochemist and FRS who, with Ernest Rutherford, explained radioactivity as the transmutation of elements, which today is known to involve nuclear reactions. He also showed that some radioactive elements have isotopes.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
17
German physical chemist (1864–1941)
Walther Hermann Nernst, a German physical chemist known for work in electrochemistry, thermodynamics, solid-state physics and physical chemistry. The heat theorem he formulated, named after him, helped lead to the third law of thermodynamics, and won him the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Wikidata · Photo: Smithsonian Institution, No restrictions
18
German chemist (1860–1917)
A German chemist and fermentation expert, whose work on fermentation won him the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
19
French chemist and physicist (1900–1958)
Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a French physicist and chemist who, with his wife, Irène Joliot-Curie, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1935 for discovering induced radioactivity. After his wife's parents, they were the second husband and wife to win a Nobel Prize, adding to the Curie family's four Nobel Prizes.
Wikidata · Photo: The original uploader was ABlockedUser at English Wikipedia . ( Original text: Post office of the GDR ), Public domain
20
French microbiologist, biochemist and Nobel laureate (born 1968)
Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier, a French biochemist, geneticist, microbiologist and academic. Since 2015 she has been one of the directors of Berlin's Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.
Wikidata · Photo: Bianca Fioretti, Hallbauer & Fioretti, CC BY-SA 4.0
21
French chemist and pharmacist (1852–1907)
Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan, a French pharmacist and chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1906 for isolating fluorine from its compounds. He also discovered moissanite and helped develop the electric arc furnace.
Wikidata · Photo: sv:Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, Public domain
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22
German chemist (1835–1917)
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer, a German chemist who synthesised indigo and devised a system for naming cyclic compounds. The Kingdom of Bavaria ennobled him in 1885, and he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1905.
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23
French chemist (1871–1935)
François Auguste Victor Grignard, a chemist from France, awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the Grignard reagent and the Grignard reaction, named after him, both important for forming carbon–carbon bonds. He also recorded some of his experiments in laboratory notebooks.
Wikidata · Photo: Fotograv. - Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalt Stockholm, Public domain
24
Dutch-American physical chemist (1884–1966)
Peter Joseph William Debye, a Dutch-American physical chemist and physicist, and a Nobel laureate in Chemistry.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
25
British chemist and physicist (1877–1945)
A British physicist and chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1922 for finding, with his mass spectrograph, isotopes in many elements that are not radioactive, and for stating the whole number rule. He was an FRS, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
26
American chemist (1912–1999)
Glenn Theodore Seaborg, an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1951 for his part in synthesising, discovering and studying ten transuranium elements. This work also led him to the actinide concept and to placing the actinide series in the periodic table.
Wikidata · Photo: Atomic Energy Commission. (1946 - 01/19/1975), Public domain
27
American physical chemist (1893–1981)
Harold Clayton Urey, an American physical chemist who pioneered work on isotopes. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1934 "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen."
Wikidata · Photo: Flickr: ENERGY.GOV - Unknown photographer. Restored by Creator:Adam Cuerden, Public domain
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28
American chemist and academic (born 1956)
An American Nobel laureate and chemical engineer, who holds Caltech's Linus Pauling Professorship of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry.
Wikidata · Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
29
Belgian physical chemist (1917–2003)
Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine, a Belgian physical chemist of Russian origin, known for his work on irreversibility, complex systems and dissipative structures.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown (Keystone - US), Public domain
30
Turkish biochemist and molecular biologist (born 1946)
A Turkish-American molecular biologist who works on DNA repair, the circadian clock and cell cycle checkpoints. With Paul L. Modrich and Tomas Lindahl he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015 for mechanistic studies of how DNA is repaired.
Wikidata · Photo: Holger Motzkau, CC BY-SA 3.0
Every Wikidata item that has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 30 are shown.
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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