Wüthrich is seventh Swiss to win chemistry prize

Karl Wüthrich is the seventh Swiss scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

swissinfo takes a look back at previous Swiss recipients of the award.

The first Swiss to receive the prize was Alfred Werner (1866-1919), who collected the award in 1913 “in recognition of his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules, by which he has thrown new light on earlier investigations and opened up new fields of research, especially in inorganic chemistry”.

In 1937, Swiss scientist Paul Karrer (1889-1971) shared the chemistry award for his “investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2”.

Two years later, Leopold Ruzicka (1887-1976) – a scientist at the Federal Insitute of Technology – shared the 1939 award “for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes”.

Fourteen years later, Hermann Staudinger – a German-born scientist who spent much of his scientific career in Switzerland – took the 1953 award in recognition of his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry.

In 1975, Switzerland’s Vladimir Prelog (1906-1998) received the prize for his “research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions”.

In 1991, Richard Ernst, another scientist from the Federal Institute of Technology, became the fifth Swiss recipient of the award for “his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy”.

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