Presentation Speech by Professor W. Palmær, Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of , on December 10, 1931 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. Under Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Prizes are to be awarded to those who have been of the greatest benefit to mankind and, particularly in respect of the…

Presentation Speech by , member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen. This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded for the discovery of a method for the separation of substances from complicated mixtures. How can it happen, one may ask, that something apparently so commonplace as…

English 12 October 1999 has awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Professor Ahmed H. Zewail, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA for showing that it is possible with rapid laser technique to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction. The Academy’s citation: For his studies of the transition states…

What links natural products like rubber and cellulose with artificial plastics is that they are made up from extraordinarily large molecules. The idea of how these molecules originate or are formed was believed to be set in stone, until Hermann Staudinger provided an audacious concept that in time helped to unravel their structural secrets. Staudinger’s…

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Editorial Board: Prof. Villy Sundström, Lund University, Prof. Bengt Nordén, Chalmers University of Technology and Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, Dr. Jennifer Herek, Lund University, Science editor Eva Krutmeijer and Dr. Solgerd Björn-Rasmussen, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Layout: Kjell Lundin, Explicare AB Illustrations: Jan-Åke Winqvist Printing: Tryckindustri 1999 Copyright © ,…

Humans affect the earth’s environment by releasing substances that deplete the protective ozone layer. The Nobel laureates in Chemistry 1995, , and , clarified the mechanisms for the chemical reactions involved. The results have led to extensive limitations on the release of ozone-damaging substances. Read more about the ozone layer and: * * * Ozone…

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My birth in July 1928 in Methuen, Massachusetts was followed just eighteen months later by the death of my father, Elias, a successful business man in that community 30 miles north of Boston. My mother, Fatina (née Hasham), changed my name from William to Elias shortly after my father’s passing. I do not remember my…