Only three women won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry until Ada Yonat won

Two of them are mother and daughter - Marie Curie and Irene Julio Curie. Chemistry Nobel Prize Trivia

100 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry - Trivia

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded a hundred times since 1901, although the number of winners is greater because, according to the regulations, the prize can be shared among up to three partners.

The prize was not awarded in the years 1916,1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, and in the years 1942-XNUMX.

Why is the award not given out in some years (especially in the years that were not war years when no award was given anyway)? The Nobel Foundation regulations state: "If none of the works considered is of importance, as indicated in the first section (to the person who had the most important chemical discovery or chemical improvement), the prize should be kept until the following year, even if then the prize cannot be distributed, the money will be transferred to the fund in the status of a limited fund.

So far, the prize has been awarded 62 times to a single winner, 22 times to two winners and 16 times it has been shared between three winners (for example in the case of Prof. Avraham Hershko and Prof. Aharon Chachanover, who also shared it with Irwin Rose, in whose laboratory they completed part of the development).

According to the regulations, the amount of the award can be divided between two works, each of which is considered eligible for the award. If a work that won an award was done by two or three people, the award can be shared between them. In no case, the prize will be shared between more than three people.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has so far been awarded to 154 winners (not including the three, including Yonat, who won it in 2009), but since Frederick Sanger won it twice, there are 153 people who have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry since 1901. It should be noted that in addition to Sanger there are two other winners Nobel Prize for Chemistry who won the Nobel again, but it was in other fields. Marie Curie received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Linus Pauling won the Chemistry Prize in 1954, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.

The youngest winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is Frédéric Julio, who was 35 years old when he won the prize, in 1935, together with his wife, Irene Julio-Curie. The oldest winner was John Penn, who, being 85 years old, in 2002, won the Nobel.

And of course, the detail we discussed a lot yesterday in the background of the awarding of the prize to Prof. Yonat - it turns out that of the 153 winners so far this year, as mentioned, only three were women. Two of them - Marie Curie and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin won the prize alone. As mentioned, it was Marie Curie in 1911, Irene Julio-Curie (daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie and wife of Frederic Julio) in 1935, and Dorothy Croft Hodkin in 1964. In general, until this year two women won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, and Ada Yonat won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, only 35 women won the Nobel Prize, about five percent of all winners, far below their share in the population.

Prof. Ehud Keinan from the Technion Faculty of Chemistry, and the president of the Israel Chemical Society, who was hosted together with me this morning on Channel 10, said in the program that it was clear that this field deserved the Nobel Prize, but the decision was delayed for a long time because it had to be decided which of the six people who contributed to it would win it. However, Prof. Yonat reached the achievement ten years before the others and the award committee places great importance on originality. Therefore it was clear that she would be among the three who would win it. Keenan further added that for a certain period she was fired from the Weizmann Institute due to the lack of a budget for her research, and because she believed in the research she continued to work voluntarily, even without a library card.