The Nobel prize in chemistry 2026 as it happens – Live

9.54am A little extra on buckminsterfullerene 

More from Neil on yesterday’s #SussexC60Nobel30 event: ‘Suzanne Carville was at school when she watched the 1992 BBC Horizon documentary ‘Molecules with sunglasses’ which told the story of how Kroto, Smalley and Curl discovered buckminsterfullerene and then raced to make it in large enough quantities to properly study. She then wrote to Kroto, asking how she could make C₆₀ in school. Sadly this proved impossible, but he invited her to his labs at Sussex where she made some with Jonathan Hare, carefully taking it home on the train. Carville went on to study chemical physics at Sussex and do a PhD too – she now teaches chemistry and physics and uses the story of C₆₀ to inspire her students. 

I also have very fond memories of watching that documentary as a 13-year-old, and I think it is among the reasons I’ve ended up where I am today. The story of the discovery of C₆₀ inspired me and many others, and hopefully today’s Nobel prize will have a similar effect on future generations of scientists.

9.49am The itinerant scientist

As we saw below, scientists began moving around the world, particularly post-second world war. With political headwinds turning against immigration with the rise of populism around the world it’s important to highlight that free movement has been a boon for science. An analysis by Nature revealed that more than 30% of this century’s science Nobel prize winners are immigrants. You can see the journeys they took in these data visualisations.

9.44am 30 years of fullerenes 

Our features editor Neil Withers went to an event at the University of Sussex yesterday that celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Nobel prize being awarded to Sussex’s Harry Kroto for the discovery of C₆₀. He shared it with Bob Curl and Rick Smalley of Rice University in Houston, US.

At the #SussexC60Nobel30 event I spoke to several people who were around either in Kroto’s group or in the chemistry department when the prize was announced. One postdoc even had an inkling that the prize might be going his way and brought in some champagne to keep in the fridge. He had checked the Nobel prize’s website that morning, but found nothing about the prize (this 1996 and was well before websites could easily stream live broadcasts, of course). When he checked after lunch, there it was, so he may have been the first person to tell Kroto he had won the prize!

Kroto then went to check his answerphone (ask your parents, kids), and sure enough there was a message from the chair of the Nobel committee. The answerphone tape still exists, and you can hear the message on Sussex’s YouTube channel:

Jonathan Hare, who was in Kroto’s team at the time, said that they never used to check the phone messages, as it was usually full of spam messages from double glazing salesmen!

9.38am Mapping where Nobel laureates are born and where they win

This map reveals where chemistry Nobel laureates were born (the red end of a thread) and where they conducted their Nobel-prize winning work (the yellow end of the thread). The drop down menu breaks the chemistry Nobel prize era into periods to enable easier visualisation of trends.

The Nobel prize is an all European award shortly after the awards are set up with all the prize-winning work done there. There is one notable move though, with Ernest Rutherford emigrating from New Zealand to the UK to conduct his prize-winning work on radioactive elements. (Apparently, there is no evidence that the quote most associated with Rutherford that ‘all science is either physics or stamp collecting’ was ever said by him. So it’s likely that winning the chemistry prize wasn’t too hard to swallow for him.)

First world war and interwar period – 1914–1938

The chemistry prize was briefly suspended for 1916 and 1917 during the first world war. Fritz Haber was the winner in 1918 for developing his eponymous process that can be used to produce fertilisers. Although perhaps his award could have been delayed or put off indefinitely given his work on chemical weapons for the German military. During this period the chemistry Nobel continued to be dominated by work conducted in European countries. However, there were signs of change in the air with Harold Urey (discoverer of deuterium), Irving Langmuir (surface chemistry) and Theodore William Richards (work on elements’ atomic weights) representing the growing scientific power of the US.

Second world war and early Cold War – 1939–1962

Following the second world war and into the Cold War the US and the USSR jostled for position in the world. Chemistry was a key part of countries’ efforts to develop nuclear weapons and there was a fierce competition between the US and USSR in nuclear science, a period known as the transfermium wars. The Nobel committee rewarded just Edwin Mattison McMillan and Glenn Theodore Seaborg with the 1951 prize for the discovery of transuranium elements. Arguably Soviet scientists could have made a claim to a portion of that prize having discovered some of these elements too. The only Soviet scientist to win a chemistry Nobel during this period was Nikolay Nikolaevich Semenov, who shared the 1956 prize with Cyril Hinshelwood for their work on reaction mechanisms. At this point Europe and the US claim roughly equal numbers of laureates.

High Cold War to collapse of USSR – 1963–1991

This period marks the growth of the US in a true scientific superpower. The direction of travel is only one way, with scientists who went on to win a chemistry Nobel prize emigrating to the US and not coming the other way. While the US only pipped Europe by a four chemistry prizes it marks the first time the US had passed this milestone. This period also throws up a couple of other notable firsts, including the first chemistry prizes to go to Japan and Canada marking their scientific coming of age. The only Soviet scientists that won a chemistry prize were those that left the USSR. One prize winner is notable for his unusual journey to the prize: Luis Leloir left France for Argentina with his parent when he was just two years old. He went on to win the chemistry prize in 1970 ‘for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrate’ and remains Argentina’s only chemistry laureate (Argentina does boast two medicine prize laureates).

End of the Cold War and globalisation – 1992–2000

During this brief period the big picture for the chemistry prize is dominated by the US. It’s interesting to see the migration from east coast US to west as institutes there grew in wealth and scientific stature. The longest journey from home to the prize during this time was Alan MacDiarmid who left his native New Zealand in 1950 and ended up performing his groundbreaking research on conductive polymers at the University of Pennsylvania in the US over 8000 miles away. He’s closely followed by Ahmed Zewail, who moved from Egypt to the US where he won the chemistry award in 1999 for his work on ultra-short laser pulse microscopy.

21^st century – 2001–2025

The 21st century sees the US continue to dominate the chemistry prize, with scientists working at its institutes securing more than double the number of awards than all the countries in Europe combined. Despite the rising scientific power of China, which by many measures is now the world’s premier research area, no one working in China has ever won a chemistry Nobel. This isn’t that surprising though as the Nobels are often awarded 20 years or more after the initial groundbreaking work is conducted as the research community and Nobel committee awaken to the potential of these new ideas. It seems highly probable that we will see a chemistry winner in the next decade or so and last year the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) at Clarivate made Tao Zhang at the Chinese Academy of Science one its citation laureates for his work on single-atom catalysis. As of 2002, 83 of ISI’s citation laureates have gone on to win a Nobel prize in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics.

9.34am How are Nobel laureates chosen?

Despite being one of science’s most prestigious prizes, the process of awarding the Nobel prize is still shrouded in mystery. This year, we’ve taken a look under the bonnet to bring you the lowdown on the nominations process, how long it takes, who gets a vote and how the final decision is made.

9.29am Data crunching and the Nobel prizes

Over the years at Chemistry World we have trawled through a lot of Nobel prize data. We’ve used this to bring you stories on the medals, laureates’ families, the nominations process, which institutes and countries have the most prize winners, does past award success predict future Nobel success and more. We’ve picked a few of our favourites for you and popped them below.

9.25am Who will win – predictions please

Every year there’s plenty of buzz around who might win and no shortage of people prepared to put their reputations on the line to make an educated guess at who might take win chemistry’s top prize. This year, citation laureates selected by the Institute of Scientific Information run by data analytics firm Clarivate include: David Allara from Pennsylvania State University, Ralph Nuzzo from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign and Jacob Sagiv from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Their work on self-assembled monolayers has led to applications, in coatings, catalysis and electronics. David Liu has also been selected for work on gene-editing technologies (it’s worth remembering that Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier won the chemistry prize for gene-editing in 2020, so he is unlikely to win any time soon in my opinion). The final ISI pick for chemistry this year was Harry Gray and Jay Winkler from the California Institute of Technology for their work on electron transfer in proteins, something important in a range of biological processes. Several of the physics and medicine citation laureates are also chemistry adjacent working in fields such as phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes and magnetoelectric multiferroics.

In a special episode of The Chemical Breakdown podcast, Chemistry World team members discussed who they’d like to take that all-important phone call from Stockholm.

Features editor Neil Withers wants to see Harry Gray recognised for his work on electron transfer in proteins, while senior science correspondent Jamie Durrani wonders whether Kevan Shokat’s work on targeting RAS proteins could eventually join the Nobel conversation.

Predictions from across the team include editor Phillip Robinson making the case for the chemistry behind GLP-1 anti-obesity drugs, while Patrick Walter backs Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman for next-generation DNA sequencing. Mason Wakley backs Richard Sarpong, Mark Levin and Bill Morandi for skeletal editing, and Emma Pewsey tips James Collins, Michael Elowitz and Stanislas Leibler for synthetic gene circuits. 

Chemical & Engineering News held their annual webinar and an expert panel made their picks for who they thought would win this year. Amy Prieto of Colorado State University chose Harry Gray and Jay Winkler for long-range electron transfer in proteins. She also picked David Allara, Ralph Nuzzo and Jacob Sagiv for self-assembled monolayers, who were also picked as citation laureates.

Ross King at the University of Cambridge and Chaochao Dun at the University at Buffalo both thought next generation DNA sequencing could win, selecting Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman as recipients. King also added in Hagan Bayley at Oxford Nanopore for his pioneering work on nanopore sequencing technologies. Dun also tipped perovskite solar cell inventors Tsutomu Miyasaka, Nam-Gyu Park and Henry Snaith.

David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate, who will be joining us for a free webinar after the announcement to provide analysis on the winners, has picked solar cells, DNA sequencing, atom-transfer radical polymerisation, single-atom catalysis or self-assembled monolayers as topics that he thinks could win this year’s prize.

9.16am Women who have won

Every year we take a snapshot of how women have fared in the Nobel prizes. As you can see, women are still significantly underrepresented in the prizes.

This year, Nature has created a quiz to test how well you know these 26 female laureates in the sciences. (Those with sharp eyes will note that there are 27 women who have won in the infographic above but only 26 female laureates in the Nature quiz. This is because one woman won a Nobel prize twice in two categories.)

9.01am The chemistry Nobel prize in numbers

Every year we look at the statistics for the chemistry prize. So far, 117 chemistry prizes have been awarded since 1901 – the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that if one prize is awarded every year then that should be 124 prizes in all. However, the prize wasn’t awarded on eight occasions – six of those were due to world wars and another was awarded a year late and on the last occasion the committee considered that no breakthrough of suitable significance had been made. That was the case in 1924, which was the year no-one won the Nobel prize in chemistry. Since 1943 there’s been an unbroken run of prize giving, which is set to continue this year.

Of those 117 chemistry prizes, 63 have been given to just one person, 25 to two laureates and 29 shared by three laureates. It’s now rare for a single scientist to win the chemistry prize and the last to do so was Dan Shechtman in 2011 for his work on quasicrystals – crystals that display short range order, but longer-range disorder. (Shechtman’s discovery was not accepted by some chemists at the time with chemistry giant Linus Pauling labelling him a quasi-scientist.)

Out of the 200 individuals awarded a chemistry Nobel prize, two have won it twice: Barry Sharpless for asymmetric epoxidation and click chemistry, and Frederick Sanger for sequencing insulin and developing the technology that enabled DNA sequencing.

The youngest person to ever win a chemistry prize was Frédéric Joliot, who was 35 years old when he won it with his wife Irene Joliot-Curie for their work on radioactive elements. The oldest was John Goodenough, who was 97 years old when he won the prize for work on lithium-ion batteries – he is the oldest Nobel laureate in any category. Goodenough was still active in research up until his death at 100, a month short of his 101st birthday.

Of the 200 individuals who have won a chemistry Nobel prize, only eight have been women. The last was Carolyn Bertozzi, who won in 2022 for her research on biorthogonal chemistry.

While we wait for the announcement, the Nobel Prize Foundation has created a quick quiz that covers all aspects of the awards.

8.52am Winning infographics 

Andy Brunning at Compound Interest creates great graphics every year of the winners of the chemistry Nobel prize. Here are the last four years worth.

This year's #NobelPrize in Chemistry will be awarded tomorrow 🏅 Here's a reminder of the research that has won in previous years, including molecular sponges, the prediction of protein structures, and clicking together new medicine molecules: www.compoundchem.com/category/nob... #ChemSky 🧪

[image or embed]

— Compound Interest | Chemistry infographics (@compoundchem.com) October 6, 2026 at 6:30 PM

8.43am Multivariate MOFs

Now that you’ve refreshed your memory of last year’s chemistry Nobel prize, dive into this long read on a growing corner of MOF research: multivariate MOFs (MTV-MOFs). These materials combine multiple organic ligands and different metal nodes within a single framework; unlike the more uniform MOFs most chemists are familiar with.

Mason Wakley spoke to several researchers, including chemistry Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi, encouraging the community to embrace complexity. ‘A lot of people shy away from it, but I think it’s a big opportunity to transform our chemistry,’ Yaghi told Chemistry World.

The appeal of MTV-MOFs is not complexity for the sake of it. Researchers are trying to emulate the controlled complexity found in biological systems, where many different components work together to produce sophisticated functions.

That same complexity, however, creates a whole host of challenges, not least accurately characterising such materials.

8.39am Last year’s winners

A quick recap, if you need one, that last year’s chemistry Nobel prize was won by Susumu Kitagawa, Omar Yaghi and Richard Robson for the discovery and development of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs).

We caught up with Kitagawa earlier this year, when he told us about his vision of providing virtually all of the chemical resources humanity needs by mining ‘the invisible gold’ all around us – air. We followed that up with a more personal interview where he told us about the importance of ‘luck, stubbornness and perseverance’ in science. To emphasise the importance of those last two, Kitagawa told The Japan News that criticism of his groundbreaking 1997 paper on 3D metal–organic frameworks was ‘devastating’ and left him almost in tears.

8.31am Who’s won so far in 2026?

On Monday the medicine or physiology prize winners were announced. Karl Deisseroth at Stanford University, US, Peter Hegemann at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, and Georg Nagel at the University of Würzburg, Germany, won for ‘their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics’. Their work coupling light-activated proteins with nerve cells has allowed researchers to investigate which behaviours are linked to firing of different neurons, revolutionising the study of neuroscience. This means complex behaviours such as anxiety, fear and thirst and can now be understood in greater molecular and cellular detail than ever before.

And on Tuesday, the winner of the physics Nobel was Francis Halzen for coming up with the idea of using a huge piece of ice beneath Antarctica to spot high-energy neutrinos being produced by exceptionally violent cosmic events. His work helped kickstart a new era of neutrino astronomy that could help us understand more about the most extreme events in the universe.

8.25am: Welcome to Chemistry World’s coverage of the Nobel prize in chemistry as it happens

Good morning and thanks for joining us for the most eagerly anticipated annual event in the chemistry calendar – the Nobel prize in chemistry. I will be your guide to all the news and events in the run up to the announcement of the prize at 11.45 CEST/UTC (10.45 BST), barring any issues getting hold of the new laureates. We’ll be posting on X and Bluesky and you can find us on Facebook and LinkedIn too and me at PatDWalter. You can watch the prize announcement live on the Nobel Foundation site (cameras usually turn on around 11.40 CEST/10.40 BST). We hope you’ll stay with us too over the next couple of hours in the run-up to the announcement as we’ll be posting some analysis on the chemistry prize, look at who’s tipped to win and some Nobel trivia. 

Following the prize announcement, we’ll also be hosting a free webinar on Friday afternoon (15.00 BST). We’ll be joined by special guests, including David Pendlebury from the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate, to talk about the research that won the chemistry prize this year and why it was rewarded with a Nobel nod.