Awards & Winners

Wolf Prize in Chemistry

Wolf Prize

The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. 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.
Date Established : 1978

Check all the winners of Wolf Prize in Chemistry presented under Wolf Prize since 1978 .


Robert S. Langer

(For conceiving and implementing advances in polymer chemistry that provide both controlled drug-release systems and new biomaterials.)

Paul Alivisatos

(For developing the colloidal inorganic nanocrystal as a building block of nanoscience making fundamental contributions to controlling the synthesis of these particles, to measuring and understanding their physical properties, and to utilizing their unique properties for applications ranging from light generation and harvesting to biological imaging.)

Charles M. Lieber

(For developing new methods to control the shape and heterostructure of nanowires, for characterizing their physical properties, and for demonstrating their potential applications.)

Stuart A. Rice, Ching W. Tang, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski

(For the deep creative contributions to the chemical sciences in the field of synthesis, properties and an understanding of organic materials.)

W. E. Moerner, Allen J. Bard

(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.)

Ada Yonath, George Feher

(For ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis.)

Richard Zare

(For his ingenious applications of laser techniques, for identifying complex mechanisms in molecules, and their use in analytical chemistry.)

Harry B. Gray

(For pioneering work in bio-inorganic chemistry, unravelling novel principles of structure and long-range electron transfer in proteins.)

Henri B. Kagan, Ry?ji Noyori, Karl Barry Sharpless

(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.)

F. Albert Cotton

(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.)

Raymond Lemieux

(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.)

Gabor A. Somorjai, Gerhard Ertl

(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.)

Gilbert Stork, Samuel J. Danishefsky

(For designing and developing novel chemical reactions which have opened new avenues to the synthesis of the synthesis of complex molecules, particularly polysaccharides and many other biologically and medicinally important compounds.)

Peter G. Schultz, Richard Lerner

(For converting antibodies into enzymes, thus permitting the catalysis of chemical reactions considered impossible to achieve by classical chemical procedures.)

Ahmed Zewail

(For using ultrafast lasers in femtosecond time resolved measurements of the evolution of chemical reactions - thus obtaining the first direct observation of bond breakage in a molecule.)

John Pople

(For his outstanding contributions to Theoretical Chemistry, particularly in developing effective and widely used modern quantum - chemical methods.)

Richard R. Ernst

(For his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially Fourier-transform and two-dimensional NMR)

Alexander Pines

(For his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially multiple-quantum and high-spin NMR.)

Duilio Arigoni, Alan R. Battersby

(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.)

Joshua Jortner, Raphael David Levine

(For their incisive theoretical studies elucidating energy acquisition and disposal in molecular systems and mechanisms for dynamical selectivity and specificity.)

David Chilton Phillips, David Mervyn Blow

(For their contributions to protein X-ray crystallography and to the elucidation of structures of enzymes and their mechanisms of action.)

Elias James Corey

(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

(for outstanding research on the synthesis, stereochemistry and reaction mechanisms for formation of natural products, especially Vitamin-B12.)

Rudolph A. Marcus

(for his contributions to chemical kinetics, especially the theories of unimolecular reactions and electron transfer reactions.)

Herbert S. Gutowsky

(for his pioneering work in the development and applications of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in chemistry.)

Harden M. McConnell

(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

(for his fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in solids.)

John Polanyi

(for his studies of chemical reactions in unprecedented detail by developing the infrared chemiluminiscence technique, and for envisaging the chemical laser.)

George C. Pimentel

(for development of matrix isolation spectroscopy and for the discovery of photodissociation lasers and chemical lasers.)

Joseph Chatt

(for pioneering and fundamental contributions to synthetic transition metal chemistry, particularly transition metal hydrides and dinitrogen complexes.)

Henry Eyring

(for his development of absolute rate theory and its imaginative applications to chemical and physical processes.)

Herman Francis Mark

(for his contributions to understanding the structure and behavior of natural and synthetic polymers.)

Carl Djerassi

(for his work in bioorganic chemistry, application of new spectroscopic techniques, and his support of international cooperation.)