9.03am: Women and the Nobel prizes
With the Nobel Foundation’s tweet about Marie Curie – the first female winner of a chemistry Nobel prize – it seems like a good time to look at how women are doing when it comes to the prizes. After 2020’s chemistry Nobel prize where two women won, normal service was resumed in 2021 with two men taking the award. In fact the science Nobel prizes across the board went to men. This has been repeated again so far this year so it’s down to chemistry to introduce a bit of diversity this year in the sciences. Far more prizes have gone to men than women since the Nobel prizes were founded in 1901. This is unsurprising though, given that women were barred from even attending universities in many countries for a significant portion of the 20th century, without even mentioning the other barriers that were placed in their way by a scientific enterprise wholly dominated by men. (Our Significant Figures series chronicles some of the discrimination women working in science faced and how they overcame it to make serious contributions to our knowledge of the world).
9.00am Who will it be?
When Marie Skłodowska Curie was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry she became the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes.
Who will join Marie Skłodowska Curie as a chemistry laureate? Find out when the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is announced today.#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/1yYta9sM0b
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2022
8.54am: Nobel prize crossword has landed!
If you’re trying to pass the time before today’s Nobel prize announcement, why not make a cup of tea and have a crack at our Nobel-themed crossword.
8.50am: The chemistry Nobel in numbers
113 chemistry prizes awarded since 1901
188 scientists have been made chemistry laureates
1 person has won the chemistry prize twice – Fred Sanger for his work on protein structure specifically insulin (1958) and nucleic acid sequencing (1980)
6 The number of double Nobel prize winners across all categories. John Bardeen won the physics prize twice (1956 and 1972), Marie Curie won the physics prize in 1903 and chemistry prize in 1911. Linus Pauling won the chemistry prize in 1954 and the peace prize in 1962 and, as above, Sanger won the chemistry prize twice. The International Committee of the Red Cross has won the peace prize three times (1917, 1944 and 1963) and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees has won the peace prize twice (1954 and 1981).
7 women have been made chemistry laureates
35 The age of the youngest chemistry laureate – Frédéric Joliot (1935) for radioactive element synthesis
97 The age of the oldest chemistry laureate – John Goodenough (2019) for the creation of lithium-ion batteries
8 The number of times the chemistry prize has not been awarded either due to war or no suitable discovery being recognised (the last time this happened was 1933)
8.43am: Quick reminder
You can find all our Nobel prize coverage in one handy place.
8.40am: Who do you think is going to win?
Everyone loves to make an informed guess at what’s going to win the next chemistry Nobel prize. Let us know in the poll what topic you think it might be and if you pick ‘Other’ tell us below the line who you think it might be…
With only a few hours left to go until the 2022 Nobel prize in chemistry, what are your final picks for this year’s winning research?
— Chemistry World (@ChemistryWorld) October 5, 2022
8.31am: Reacting to the Nobel prize
We’ll be a hosting a free webinar at 1500 BST (1600 UTC) on Friday 7 October taking in all the reactions from around the world to the awarding of the chemistry Nobel prize. Join us and special guests as we talk about who won, why, and what it means for chemistry. Whether you’re delighted or disappointed, we’d love you to join us and share your thoughts on the announcement.
8.23am: The Nobels so far this year
So, a quick recap of what’s happened so far in the Nobels. On Monday Svante Pääbo won the medicine or physiology prize for his work sequencing ancient human relatives and his contributions to understanding the evolution of humanity and extinct hominins. Tuesday was the turn of the physics prize and that went to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their research on quantum entanglement that laid the groundwork for the development of quantum computing – something that has caused great excitement in the fundamental chemistry community.
And what happened last year? Well, last year’s winners were Ben List and Dave MacMillan for their work on asymmetric organocatalysis. MacMillan spoke to us recently on the joys of handing out his medal to everyone, chatting with William Shatner and Alex Ferguson and the pain of being a Scottish football fan!
8.15am: Morning all, anything interesting happening today?
Thanks for joining us this morning for the most eagerly anticipated annual event in the chemistry calendar – the chemistry Nobel (or chemistry Christmas as it’s become know here). We’ll be bringing you all the news and events in the run up to the announcement of the prize at 11.45 CEST/UTC (10.45 BST) at the earliest and following the awarding of the most prestigious prize in chemistry. We’ll be tweeting from @ChemistryWorld and you can find us on Facebook too. You can also watch the prize announcement made live over on the Nobel Foundation site and we’ll be hosting the video here shortly before the announcement is made. If you’re on Twitter then you’ll want to follow the hashtag #chemnobel and #nobelprize. We hope you’ll stay with us too over the next couple of hours in the run-up to the announcement as we’ll be posting some analysis of the chemistry prize, look at who’s tipped to win and some Nobel trivia. We’ll also be running a special all-things-Nobel-prize-related edition of our regular Re:action newsletter later today, rounding up the best of our stories and the rest of the web. If you’d like to receive it later today then sign-up asap.