Your Questions about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

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Question: The indication of the country of Osamu Shimomura of the winning chemical prize becomes U.S.A., but his nationality is Japan, and he graduated from Japanese university with Japan birth Japan breeding and he lives in USA just for work. So I propose that you change the indication of the country to Japan from USA. Most of Japanese feel dissatisfaction for this indication.

Answer: Actually the nationality of Dr Shimomura is given as Japanese in the official announcement of the Nobel Prize from the Academy. There is even a translation into Japanese of the short description of the Nobel Prize for this reason.

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Question: I was wondering, how is the discovery that won this years monumentally important to the field of chemistry?

Answer: "Monumentally" is perhaps not a word I would use, but according to the will of Alfred Nobel it has to be a discovery or improvement of the greatest benefit to mankind. So we have to select a discovery that really has changed the course of chemical science, and we believe that the GFP and its uses really have done that to biochemical science. This discovery lets us trace biochemical events where they are actually happening – inside a living cell. This is truly a most important step forward in understanding biochemistry. I should also add that we consider biochemistry to be a part of chemistry – not as in some countries to be a scientific field different from chemistry.

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Question: Where is "most important chemical discovery or improvement" in case of green fluorescent protein? (this year's Chemistry prize)

Answer: See answer to question above.

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Question: How do you decide between giving the prize to a widely enabling technology or a new scientific understanding?

Answer: As you may see if you go through a few of the recent Nobel Prizes, they sometimes concern one and sometimes the other of the two aspects that you mention. Both are very important to chemical science.

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Question: When is the prize in chemistry going to be awarded to a woman? The Nobel Prize committee has now established a 44 year long record of giving it to men. There have now been 83 men who have shared in the prize since the last time it was awarded to a woman.

Answer: This is a very difficult question to answer (of course I cannot give a precise prediction). According to the will of Alfred Nobel we cannot take into account nationality or other personal aspects, but only the results count. Today's Nobel Prizes typically reflect work done perhaps 10-20 years ago, and very few women were leading chemical scientists in those days. Today the gender distribution among active scientists is somewhat more even, so my guess is that in the future we will see a (slowly) growing number of women awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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Question: It seems like the recognized discoveries are closer and closer related to medicine than actual physical chemistry. How does the committee decide whether the recipients receive the chemistry or medicine award?

Answer: This is a question that is discussed between the Committees of Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine when we have the same candidates nominated for both Nobel Prizes. It is decided on a case-by-case basis when we discuss the individual candidates.

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Question: Why do molecular biologists keep getting Chemistry Nobel Prizes (in addition to the Physiology or Medicine Prize) even when their research and the consequences thereof bear no relationship and have no impact on chemical research?

Answer: This is probably a reflection that modern biosciences are to a large extent fused together and a lot of the research cannot be labelled pure biochemistry or molecular biology or biophysics but often has ingredients of all of them. We consider biochemistry to be a true part of chemistry, and the crucial concept is that the research has to give rise to understanding of important molecular properties.

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Interview with Professor Lars Thelander after the announcement of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Articles about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Find out more about nomination and selection of the Nobel Prize Laureates in Chemistry