Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry Quiz

Answer: Jacobus van't Hoff

The Dutch chemist van't Hoff (1852-1911) won in 1901 for his work in chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions. A professor at the University of Amsterdam and later Berlin, Van't Hoff was also known for his work in stereo-chemistry, chemical kinetics, and chemical equilibrium.

Answer: 1914

Theodore Richards (1868-1928) won for determining the accurate atomic weight of elements. In the days before electronic analysis, Richards was instrumental in discovering isotopes of elements, proving the same element can have different atomic weights. He was a professor at Harvard.

Answer: Britain

The first women to won the Nobel Prize were Marie Curie in 1911 (discovery of the elements radium and polonium) and Irene Curie in 1935 (synthesizing radioactive elements). The 1964 winner, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, used X-ray techniques to determine the structures of biomedical substances.

Answer: Frederick Sanger

Sanger won in 1958 for his work on structure on insulin and proteins and again in 1980 for determining base sequences in nucleic acids. Sanger was instrumental in sequencing insulin, RNA, and DNA.

Answer: 1954

Pauling won his Chemistry prize for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and the Peace Prize as an anti-nuclear activist. Pauling is the second person to win the Nobel Prize in two fields, the other being Marie Curie, who won the Physics prize in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911.

Answer: UCLA

Carbon-14 revolutionized archaeology in determining the age of artifacts, using the hydrogen isotope tritium to date water and wine. Libby worked building Geiger counters and enriched the Uranium-235 used in the atomic bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima. Libby was a professor at UCLA from 1959 to 1976.

Answer: False

The 1981 Prize was awarded to Hoffmann and Kenichi Fukui for their work for their theories concerning chemical reactions, including the barrier heights in respect to conservation of symmetry. Woodard actually started with Hoffman, but died in 1979 and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. Woodard was already a Nobel Prize winner, in 1965 for his work in organic synthesis.

Answer: Egypt

Zewail won for his study of transition states and the first from his country to win in a scientific field. He is considered the father of femtochemistry, the study of chemical reactions on extremely short time scales. A femtounit is one billion times smaller than a microunit.

Answer: Germany

Gerhard Ertl won the 2007 honor for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces, which Ertl earned on his 71st birthday. His specialties were determining the detailed mechanism of the synthesis of ammonia over iron and oxidation of carbon monoxide with a platinum catalyst.

Answer: Microscopy

Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German Stefan Hell won for developing super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, which would bring microscopy into the nanodimension. A nanounit is 1000 times smaller than a microunit.