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| x Year | x Notes/Description | x Subject Area | x Nobel Prize Winner | x Winners | |||
| x name | x image | x article | |||||
| 2008 | "for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus" | HIV | Françoise Barré-Sinoussi | ||||
| Luc Montagnier | |||||||
| 1975 | "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection" | Atomic nucleus |
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The nucleus is the very dense region consisting of nucleons (protons and neutrons) at the center of an atom. Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the orbiting...
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James Rainwater | ||
| Ben Roy Mottelson | |||||||
| Aage Niels Bohr | |||||||
| 2004 | "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation" | ||||||
| 1982 | "for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes" | Electron crystallography |
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Electron crystallography is a method to determine the arrangement of atoms in solids using an electron microscope. It can complement X-ray crystallography for studies of very small crystals (
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Aaron Klug | ||
| 1979 | "for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current" | Electroweak interaction |
In particle physics, the electroweak interaction is the unified description of two of the four fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies,...
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Steven Weinberg | |||
| Abdus Salam | |||||||
| Sheldon Lee Glashow | |||||||
| 1939 | "for his work on sex hormones" | Sex steroid |
Sex steroids, aka gonadal steroids, are steroid hormones that interact with vertebrate androgen or estrogen receptors. Their effects are mediated by slow genomic mechanisms through nuclear receptors as well as by fast nongenomic mechanisms through...
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Adolf Butenandt | |||
| 1928 | "for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins" | Sterol |
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Sterols are an important class of organic molecules. They occur naturally in plants, animals and fungi, with the most familiar type of animal sterol being cholesterol. Cholesterol is vital to cellular function, and a precursor to fat-soluable...
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Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus | ||
| 1905 | "in recognition of his services in the advancement of organic chemistry and the chemical industry, through his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds" | Baeyer-Drewson indigo synthesis |
The Baeyer-Drewson indigo synthesis (1882) is an organic reaction in which indigo is prepared from o-nitrobenzaldehyde and acetone
The reaction is classified as a Aldol condensation. As a practical route to indigo, this method was displaced by...
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Adolf von Baeyer | |||
| Indigo dye |
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Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color (see indigo). Historically, indigo was extracted from plants, and this process was important economically because blue dyes were once rare. Nearly all indigo produced today - several...
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| 1980 | "for his efforts in the defense of human rights" | Human rights |
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Human rights are "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty,...
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Adolfo Pérez Esquivel | ||
| 1999 | "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy" | Femtochemistry |
Femtochemistry is the science that studies chemical reactions on extremely short timescales, approximately 10 seconds (one femtosecond, hence the name).
In 1999, Ahmed H. Zewail received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in this...
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Ahmed Zewail | |||
| 2007 | "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" | ||||||
| 2000 | "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers" | Conductive polymer |
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Conductive polymers are organic polymers that conduct electricity. Such compounds may be true metallic conductors or semiconductors. It is generally accepted that metals conduct electricity well and that organic compounds are insulating, but this...
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Alan MacDiarmid | ||
| Hideki Shirakawa | |||||||
| Alan J. Heeger | |||||||
| 1963 | "for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of the nerve cell membrane" | Action potential |
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An action potential (or nerve impulse) is a transient alteration of the transmembrane voltage (or membrane potential) across an excitable membrane in an excitable cell (such as a neuron or myocyte) generated by the activity of voltage-gated ion...
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Andrew Huxley | ||
| Chemical synapse |
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Chemical synapses are specialized junctions through which neurons signal to each other and to non-neuronal cells such as those in muscles or glands. Chemical synapses allow neurons to form circuits within the central nervous system. They are crucial...
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Alan Lloyd Hodgkin | ||||
| John Carew Eccles | |||||||
| 1907 | "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid" | Michelson-Morley experiment |
The Michelson–Morley experiment was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University. It is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether. The...
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Albert Abraham Michelson | |||
| 1957 | "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times" | Capital punishment |
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Capital punishment or the death penalty, is the execution of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from...
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Albert Camus | ||
| 1974 | "for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell" | Cell fractionation |
Cell fractionation is the separation of homogeneous sets, usually organelles, from a heterogeneous population of cells.
There are three principal steps involved:
Tissue is typically homogenized in an isotonic buffer solution using a variety of...
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George Emil Palade | |||
| Organelle |
|
In cell biology, an organelle (pronounced /ɔrɡəˈnɛl/) is a specialized subunit within a cell that has a specific function, and is usually separately enclosed within its own lipid membrane.
The name organelle comes from the idea that these structures...
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Albert Claude | ||||
| Christian de Duve | |||||||
| 1921 | "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" | Photoelectric effect |
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The photoelectric effect is a phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from matter (metals and non-metallic solids, liquids or gases) as a consequence of their absorption of energy from electromagnetic radiation of very short wavelength, such as...
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Albert Einstein | ||
| 2007 | "for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance" | Giant magnetoresistive effect |
Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) is a quantum mechanical magnetoresistance effect observed in thin film structures composed of alternating ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic layers.
The effect manifests itself as a significant decrease (typically 10–80%) in...
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Peter Grünberg | |||
| Albert Fert | |||||||
| 1960 | "for his role in the non-violent struggle against apartheid." | History of South Africa in the apartheid era |
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Apartheid—meaning separateness in Afrikaans (which is cognate to the English apart and -hood)—was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government in South Africa between 1948 and early 1994.
Racial segregation in South...
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Albert Lutuli | ||
| Nonviolence |
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Nonviolence is a philosophy and strategy for social change that rejects the use of violence. As such, nonviolence is an alternative to passive acceptance of oppression and armed struggle against it. Practitioners of nonviolence may use diverse...
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| 1937 | "for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid" | Vitamin C |
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Vitamin C or L-ascorbic acid is an essential nutrient for humans, in which it functions as a vitamin. Ascorbate (an ion of ascorbic acid) is required for a range of essential metabolic reactions in all animals and plants. It is made internally by...
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Albert Szent-Györgyi | ||
| Fumaric acid |
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Fumaric acid or trans-butenedioic acid, is the chemical compound with the formula HO2CCH=CHCO2H.
This white crystalline compound is one of two isomeric unsaturated dicarboxylic acids, the other being maleic acid, wherein the carboxylic acid groups...
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| 1910 | "in recognition of the contributions to our knowledge of cell chemistry made through his work on proteins, including the nucleic substances" | Cell biology |
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Cell biology (formerly cytology, from the Greek kytos, "container") is an academic discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle,...
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Albrecht Kossel | ||
| Protein |
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Proteins (also known as polypeptides) are organic compounds made of amino acids arranged in a linear chain and folded into a globular form. The amino acids in a polymer chain are joined together by the peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino...
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| Nucleic Acids |
A family of macromolecules, composed of various moiety: purines, pyrimidines, phosphoric acid, and a pentose, either d-ribose or d-deoxyribose. Nucleic acids in the form either DNA or RNA was found in the chromosomes, nucleoli, mitochondria, and...
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| 1970 | "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature" | Gulag |
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The Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared. The camps housed all types of...
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Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn | ||
| 1964 | "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle" | Quantum electronics |
Quantum electronics is the area of physics dealing with the effects of quantum mechanics on the behaviour of electrons in matter, and their interactions with photons.
It is today rarely considered a subfield in its own right, as it has been absorbed...
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Nikolay Basov | |||
| Maser |
A maser is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification due to stimulated emission. Historically the term came from the acronym "Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", although modern masers emit...
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Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov | |||||
| Charles Hard Townes | |||||||
| 1945 | "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases" | Penicillin |
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Penicillin (sometimes abbreviated PCN or pen) is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. Penicillin antibiotics are historically significant because they are the first drugs that were effective against many previously serious diseases...
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Ernst Boris Chain | ||
| Howard Walter Florey | |||||||
| Alexander Fleming | |||||||
| 1957 | "for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes" | Nucleotide |
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Nucleotides are molecules that, when joined together, make up the structural units of RNA and DNA. In addition, nucleotides play central roles in metabolism. In that capacity, they serve as sources of chemical energy (adenosine triphosphate and...
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Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd | ||
| 2003 | "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids" | Superfluid |
Superfluidity is a phase of matter or description of heat capacity in which unusual effects are observed when liquids, typically of helium-4 or helium-3, overcome friction by surface interaction when at a stage (known as the "lambda point" for...
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Vitaly Ginzburg | |||
| Superconductivity |
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Superconductivity occurs in certain materials at very low temperatures. When superconductive, a material has an electrical resistance of exactly zero and no interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect). It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes...
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Anthony James Leggett | ||||
| Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov | |||||||
| 1912 | "in recognition of his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs" | Surgical suture |
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Surgical suture is a medical device used to hold body tissues together after injury or surgery. Sutures must be strong enough to hold tissue securely but flexible enough to be knotted. They must be hypoallergenic and avoid the "wick effect" that...
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Alexis Carrel | ||
| Organ transplant |
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Organ transplant is the moving of an organ from one body to another (or from a donor site on the patient's own body), for the purpose of replacing the recipient's damaged or failing organ with a working one from the donor site. Organ donors can be...
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| 1982 | "as the driving force behind the Treaty of Tlatelolco, setting up a nuclear-free zone in Latin America and the Caribbean." | Treaty of Tlatelolco |
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The Treaty of Tlatelolco is the conventional name given to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is embodied in the OPANAL (el Organismo para la Proscripción de las Armas Nucleares en la América...
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Alfonso García Robles | ||
| 1994 | "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells" | G-protein signal transduction | Martin Rodbell | ||||
| Alfred G. Gilman | |||||||
| 1969 | "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses" | Viral replication |
Viral replication is the term used by virologists to describe the formation of biological viruses during the infection process in the target host cells. Viruses must first get into the cell before viral replication can occur. From the perspective of...
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Max Delbrück | |||
| Salvador Luria | |||||||
| Alfred Hershey | |||||||
| 1966 | "for the discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms" | Optical pumping |
Optical pumping is a process in which light is used to raise (or "pump") electrons from a lower energy level in an atom or molecule to a higher one. It is commonly used in laser construction, to pump the active laser medium so as to achieve...
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Alfred Kastler | |||
| 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" | Octahedral molecular geometry |
|
In chemistry, octahedral molecular geometry describes the shape of compounds where in six atoms or groups of atoms or ligands are symmetrically arranged around a central atom, defining the vertices of an octahedron. The octahedron has eight faces,...
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Alfred Werner | ||
| 1979 | "for the development of computer assisted tomography" | Computed tomography |
|
Computed tomography (CT) is a medical imaging method employing tomography created by computer processing. Digital geometry processing is used to generate a three-dimensional image of the inside of an object from a large series of two-dimensional X...
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Godfrey Hounsfield | ||
| Allan McLeod Cormack | |||||||
| 1911 | "for his work on the dioptrics of the eye" | Dioptrics |
Dioptrics is the study of the refraction of light, especially by lenses. Telescopes that create their image with an objective that is a convex lens (refractors) are said to be "dioptric" telescopes.
An early study of dioptrics was conducted by...
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Allvar Gullstrand | |||
| 1998 | "for his contributions to welfare economics" | Welfare economics |
|
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine allocative efficiency within an economy and the income distribution associated with it. It analyzes social welfare, however measured, in terms...
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Amartya Sen | ||
| 1947 | Humanitarian aid |
|
Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. It...
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Quaker Peace and Social Witness | |||
| American Friends Service Committee | |||||||
| 1977 | "for its campaign against torture" | Human rights |
|
Human rights are "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty,...
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Amnesty International | ||
| 1921 | "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament" | Literature |
|
Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter), and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters (as in the phrase "Arts and Letters"). In...
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Anatole France | ||
| 1956 | "for their discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system" | Cardiac catheterization |
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Cardiac catheterization (heart cath) is the insertion of a catheter into a chamber or vessel of the heart. This is done for both investigational and interventional purposes. Coronary catheterization is a subset of this technique, involving the...
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Dickinson W. Richards | ||
| Werner Forssmann | |||||||
| André Frédéric Cournand | |||||||
| 1947 | "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight" | Literature |
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Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter), and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters (as in the phrase "Arts and Letters"). In...
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André Gide | ||
| 1965 | "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis" | Lac operon |
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The lac operon is an operon required for the transport and metabolism of lactose in Escherichia coli and some other enteric bacteria. It consists of three adjacent structural genes, a promoter, a terminator, and an operator. The lac operon is...
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Jacques Monod | ||
| Provirus |
A provirus is a virus genome that has integrated itself into the DNA of a host cell. One kind of virus that can become a provirus is a retrovirus. When a retrovirus invades a cell, the RNA of the retrovirus is transcribed into DNA by reverse...
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François Jacob | |||||
| André Michel Lwoff | |||||||
| 1975 | "for his ideas on social development of human rights as a new basis of all politics" | Civil liberties |
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Civil liberties are rights in Freedom that protect an individual from the government of the nation in which they reside. Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power and interfere unduly with the lives of...
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Andrei Sakharov | ||
| 2006 | "for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA" | RNA interference |
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RNA interference (RNAi) is a system within living cells that helps to control which genes are active and how active they are. Two types of small RNA molecules – microRNA (miRNA) and small interfering RNA (siRNA) – are central to RNA interference....
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Craig Mello | ||
| Andrew Fire | |||||||
| 1977 | "for their discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain" | Neurohormone |
A neurohormone is any hormone produced and released by neurons.
Examples include:
In contrast to the classical hormones oxytocin and ADH, which are released to the blood and distributed throughout the body, neurotransmitters can be considered...
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Roger Guillemin | |||
| Andrzej W. Schally | |||||||
| 1903 | " In recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity." | Radioactive decay |
Radioactive decay is the process in which an unstable atomic nucleus spontaneously loses energy by emitting ionizing particles and radiation. This decay, or loss of energy, results in an atom of one type, called the parent nuclide transforming to an...
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Antoine Henri Becquerel | |||
| 1974 | "for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars" | Radio astronomy |
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Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The initial detection of radio waves from an astronomical object (the Milky Way) was made in the 1930s, but subsequent advances (especially post-World...
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Antony Hewish | ||
| Martin Ryle | |||||||
| 1978 | "for creating the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty" | Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty |
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The 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty (Arabic: معاهدة السلام المصرية الإسرائيلية, Mu`āhadat as-Salām al-Masrīyah al-'Isrā'īlīyah; Hebrew: הסכם השלום בין ישראל למצרים, Heskem HaShalom Bein Yisrael LeMitzrayim) was signed in Washington, DC on 26 March...
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Menachem Begin | ||
| Anwar Sadat | |||||||
| 1952 | "for their invention of partition chromatography" | Chromatography |
|
Chromatography (from Greek χρώμα:chroma, color and γραφειν:graphein to write) is the collective term for a set of laboratory techniques for the separation of mixtures. It involves passing a mixture dissolved in a "mobile phase" through a stationary...
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Richard Laurence Millington Synge | ||
| Archer John Porter Martin | |||||||
| 1922 | "for his discovery relating to the production of heat in the muscle" | Muscle |
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Muscle (from Latin musculus, diminutive of mus "mouse") is the contractile tissue of the body and is derived from the mesodermal layer of embryonic germ cells. Muscle cells contain contractile filaments that move past each other and change the size...
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Archibald Hill | ||
| 1926 | "for the Locarno Treaties" | Locarno Treaties |
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The Locarno Treaties were seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, Switzerland on 5 October – 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on December 1, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of central and...
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Gustav Stresemann | ||
| Aristide Briand | |||||||
| 1948 | "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins" | Electrophoresis |
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Electrophoresis is the motion of dispersed particles relative to a fluid under the influence of a spatially uniform electric field. This electrokinetic phenomenon was observed for the first time in 1807 by Reuss , who noticed that the application of...
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Arne Tiselius | ||
| 1978 | "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation" | Cosmic microwave background radiation |
|
In cosmology, cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation (also CMBR, CBR, MBR, and relic radiation) is a form of electromagnetic radiation filling the universe. With a traditional optical telescope, the space between stars and galaxies (the...
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Robert Woodrow Wilson | ||
| Arno Allan Penzias | |||||||
| 1927 | "for his discovery of the effect named after him" | Compton scattering |
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In physics, Compton scattering or the Compton effect is the decrease in energy (increase in wavelength) of an X-ray or gamma ray photon, when it interacts with matter. Because of the change in photon energy, it is an inelastic scattering process....
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Arthur Compton | ||
| 1929 | "for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes" | Fermentation |
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Fermentation in food processing typically is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids using yeasts, bacteria, or a combination thereof, under anaerobic conditions. A more restricted definition of fermentation...
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Hans von Euler-Chelpin | ||
| Arthur Harden | |||||||
| 1934 | World Disarmament Conference |
The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments of 1932-34 (sometimes World Disarmament Conference or Geneva Disarmament Conference) was an effort by member states of the League of Nations, together with the U.S. and the Soviet Union,...
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Arthur Henderson | ||||
| 1959 | "for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid" | nucleic acid synthesis | Severo Ochoa | ||||
| DNA |
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Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA...
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Arthur Kornberg | ||||
| 1981 | "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy" | Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy |
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Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a type of atomic emission spectroscopy which uses a highly energetic laser pulse as the excitation source. The laser is focused to form a plasma, which atomizes and excites samples. In principle, LIBS...
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Nicolaas Bloembergen | ||
| Arthur Leonard Schawlow | |||||||
| 1945 | "for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method" | Agricultural chemistry |
Agricultural chemistry is the study of both chemistry and biochemistry which are important in agricultural production, the processing of raw products into foods and beverages, and in environmental monitoring and remediation. These studies emphasize...
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Artturi Ilmari Virtanen | |||
| AIV fodder |
AIV Fodder is a kind of silage. The AIV liquid is added to the green fodder to improve the storage. This is especially important during long winters. The process includes adding a dilute hydrochloric or sulfuric acid to newly stored grain. Increased...
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| 2000 | "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system" | nervous system signal transduction | Paul Greengard | ||||
| Eric R. Kandel | |||||||
| Arvid Carlsson | |||||||
| 1920 | "for his discovery of the capillary motor regulating mechanism" | Capillary |
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Capillaries are the smallest of a body's blood vessels and are part of the microcirculation. They are only 1 cell thick. These microvessels, measuring 5-10 μm in diameter, connect arterioles and venules, and enable the exchange of water, oxygen,...
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August Krogh | ||
