Nobel Laureates in Chemistry (2007-2008)

Prize
Year Laureate Country Contribution To Mankind
Motivation
 Chemical reactions are speeded up by surfaces, as
in the case when gaseous molecules come in
contact with a metal surface.
 Gerhard Ertl was able to map out details of a
process of great importance in the production of
artificial fertilizer: the Haber-Bosch process in
which nitrogen in the air is converted to ammonia
via an iron catalyst. This has had a lasting
influence on the field of heterogeneous catalysis.
 The agriculture of the world has been supplied
with fertilizers rich in nitrogen since 1913 due to
the Haber-Bosch process
 Today every car produced has a catalyst system
that converts carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons
to carbon dioxide in the exhaust gases. Also the
content of nitrous gases is reduced through the
action of the catalyst.
"for his  Currently large resources are devoted to the
studies of development of efficient fuel cells that would
Gerhard chemical enable the use of hydrogen as a standard vehicle
2007 Germany fuel.
Ertl processes on
solid  Corrosion, which is caused by chemical reactions
surfaces". at surfaces, is a major problem both in everyday
life and in more sophisticated industrial contexts
such as in nuclear power plants and airplanes.
Damage by corrosion may be reduced by
adjusting the composition of the surface so that it
is protected by an oxide layer formed in air.
 Chemical processes at surfaces play a central role
in wide span of economically highly significant
applications of chemical knowledge to the
solution of practical problems. The study of
chemical processes at surfaces also plays a
significant role from the perspective of basic
chemical research.
 Ertl’s methodology sets a standard for how
chemical processes on surfaces can be studied and
elucidated.
 Prize
Year Laureate Country Contribution To Mankind
Motivation
 The jellyfish Aequorea victoria is bioluminescent,
i.e. it produces light with the help of chemical
reactions that provide the energy for photon
emission and emits green light. The residues in the
GPF, obtained from this jellyfish, sequence
spontaneously form the fluorescent chromophore.
Its fluorescence is “automatically” turned on in
Osamu every organism where it is expressed.
Japan
Shimomura  GFP-based methods have radically changed the
experimental potential within essentially all
branches of the biological sciences.
 GFP has been used to study membrane-bound
organelles, and one key finding is that many of
these continuously exchange protein components
with each other.
 GFP fusions have been extensively used for
imaging cells and tissues within multicellular
organisms and have become a very important
experimental tool in neurobiology.
 The most common use of GFP has been to monitor
"for the the location, movement and chemical reactions
discovery involving proteins expressed as fusion partners
and with GFP. The localization of GFP fusion proteins
Roger Y. development in different parts of cells, for example during the
2008 U.S.A.
Tsien of the green cell cycle or during exponential growth, has been
fluorescent extensively studied.
protein,  GFP-like proteins allow the monitoring in time and
GFP". space of an ever-increasing number of phenomena
in living cells and organisms like gene expression,
protein localization and dynamics, protein-protein
interactions, cell division, chromosome replication
and organization, intracellular transport pathways,
organelle inheritance and biogenesis, to name but a
few.
 Osamu Shimomura, who isolated GFP from the
jellyfish Aequorea victoria and found that the
protein glowed green when illuminated with
ultraviolet light.
 Martin Chalfie inserted the GFP gene into the
Martin ringworm C. elegans and succeeded in coloring six
U.S.A. individual cells that could then be tracked.
Chalfie
 Roger Y. Tsien elucidated how GFP produces its
shimmering light and succeeded in varying the
color of the light so that different proteins and
multiple, simultaneous biological processes could
be tracked.
 1) GERHARD ERTL – Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2007
BORN: 10 October 1936, Bad Cannstatt, Germany

NATIONALITY: German

RESIDENCE: Germany

FIELDS: Surface Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry

INSTITUTIONS: Technical University of

Hannover,
Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Technical
University of Munich, Free University of Berlin,
Technical University of Berlin, Fritz Haber Institute
of the MPG, Humboldt University of Berlin.

ALMA MATER: University of Stuttgart, Technical

University of Munich.

NOTABLE AWARDS: Japan Prize (1992), Wolf

Prize in Chemistry (1998), Nobel Prize in
Chemistry (2007), Otto Hahn Prize (2007)
AFFILIATION AT THE TIME OF AWARD:
Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin,
Germany
2) OSAMU SHIMOMURA – Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008
BORN: 27 August 1928, Kyoto, Japan

NATIONALITY: Japanese

RESIDENCE: U.S.A.

FIELDS: Biochemistry

INSTITUTIONS: Princeton University, Boston University

School of Medicine, Marine Biological Laboratory
ALMA MATER: Nagasaki University, Nagoya University

NOTABLE AWARDS: Asahi Prize (2006), Nobel Prize in

Chemistry (2008), Golden Goose Award (2012)
AFFLIATION AT THE TIME OF AWARD: Marine
Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA, USA, Boston
University Medical School, Massachusetts, MA, USA
 3) ROGER Y. TSIEN – Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008

BORN: February 1, 1952

New York, U.S.A.

DIED:  24 August 2016, Eugene, OR, USA

NATIONALITY: American
RESIDENCE: San Diego, California

FIELDS: Biochemistry

 INSTITUTIONS: University of California, San Diego, University of California, Berkeley


ALMA MATER: Harvard University, University
of Cambridge

NOTABLE AWARDS: Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2008), Golden Goose Award (2012), E. B. Wilson

Medal (2008), Rosenstiel Award (2006),
ForMemRS (2006), Wolf Prize in Medicine (2004),
Keio Medical Science Prize (2004), EMBO
Membership (2005), Dr A.H. Heineken Prize (2002),
Artois-Baillet Latour Health Prize(1995),Gairdner
Foundation International Award (1995)

AFFLIATION AT THE TIME OF AWARD:

University of California, San Diego, CA, USA, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
4) MARTIN CHALFIE – Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2008

BORN: 15 January 1947, Chicago, IL, USA

NATIONALITY: American

RESIDENCE: U.S.A.

FIELDS: Biochemistry, Neurobiology

INSTITUTIONS: Columbia University

ALMA MATER: Harvard University

NOTABLE AWARDS: E. B. Wilson

Medal (2008), Nobel Prize in Chemistry

(2008), Golden Goose Award (2012)

AFFLIATION AT THE TIME OF

AWARD: Columbia University, New York,

NY, USA