Presentation Speech by Professor Sture Forsén of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, A burning flame – a little everyday miracle that has astonished and fascinated most of us. A chemical reaction that produces heat and light and that during historical times has modified the conditions of…

Life on earth is dependent on photosynthesis, the process in which solar light is converted into chemical energy and stored as carbohydrates. The carbohydrates are, finally, degraded to carbon dioxide and water in the cell respiration in a reaction requiring molecular oxygen. The liberated energy is utilized to power the life processes. In photosynthesis, the…

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2007   In the Haber-Bosch process nitrogen is extracted from the air to form ammonia. This is an important stage in the production of artificial fertilizers and the process won Fritz Haber the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Even though the chemical process has been known for a long time,…

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Walther Hermann Nernst was born in Briesen, West Prussia, on June 25, 1864. His father, Gustav Nernst, was a district judge. He spent his early school years at Graudentz, and subsequently went to the Universities of Zurich, Berlin and Graz (Ludwig Boltzmann and Albert von Ettinghausen), studying physics and mathematics, before proceeding to Wurzburg (Friedrich…

Questions and answers After the 2007 Nobel Prize announcements, visitors to Nobelprize.org had the possibility to submit questions to the 2007 Nobel Laureates. Here, Gerhard Ertl answers a selection of the questions. Question: Apart from the development of more effective adsorption catalysts, what in your opinion are the most important applications of the knowledge we…

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Presentation Speech by Professor A. Ölander, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. The Nobel Prize which is now to be given to Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood and Academician Nikolai Nikolaevic Semenov “for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions” reminds us of the very…