Wolf Prize in Chemistry

The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and has been awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, and Arts.

The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is considered to be one of the most prestigious international chemistry awards, behind only the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Becoming a Wolf Prize laureate has been viewed as a potential precursor to receiving the Nobel Prize. As of 2025, 13 awardees have subsequently become Nobel laureates; the most recent of those is Omar M. Yaghi.

Laureates

YearWolf Prize Recipients in Chemistry Name Nationality Citation 1978 Carl Djerassi for his work in bioorganic chemistry, application of new spectroscopic techniques, and his support of international cooperation. 1979 Herman Mark for his contributions to understanding the structure and behavior of natural and synthetic polymers. 1980 Henry Eyring for his development of absolute rate theory and its imaginative applications to chemical and physical processes. 1981 Joseph Chatt for pioneering and fundamental contributions to synthetic transition metal chemistry, particularly transition metal hydrides and dinitrogen complexes. 1982 John Charles Polanyi / for his studies of chemical reactions in unprecedented detail by developing the infrared chemiluminescence technique, and for envisaging the chemical laser. George C. Pimentel for development of matrix isolation spectroscopy and for the discovery of photodissociation lasers and chemical lasers. 1983/4 Herbert S. Gutowsky for his pioneering work in the development and applications of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in chemistry. Harden M. McConnell for his studies of the electronic structure of molecules through paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and for the introduction and biological applications of spin label techniques. John S. Waugh for his fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in solids. 1984/5 Rudolph A. Marcus / for his contributions to chemical kinetics, especially the theories of unimolecular reactions and electron transfer reactions. 1986 Elias James Corey for outstanding research on the synthesis of many highly complex natural products and the demonstration of novel ways of thinking about such syntheses. Albert Eschenmoser for outstanding research on the synthesis, stereochemistry and reaction mechanisms for formation of natural products, especially Vitamin-B12. 1987 David C. Phillips David M. Blow for their contributions to protein X-ray crystallography and to the elucidation of structures of enzymes and their mechanisms of action. 1988 Joshua Jortner Raphael David Levine for their incisive theoretical studies elucidating energy acquisition and disposal in molecular systems and mechanisms for dynamical selectivity and specificity. 1989 Duilio Arigoni Alan R. Battersby for their fundamental contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of enzymic reactions and of the biosynthesis of natural products, in particular the pigments of life. 1990 No award1991 Richard R. Ernst for his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially Fourier-transform and two-dimensional NMR Alexander Pines / for his revolutionary contributions to NMR spectroscopy, especially multiple-quantum and high-spin NMR. 1992 John Pople for his outstanding contributions to theoretical chemistry, particularly in developing effective and widely used modern quantum- chemical methods. 1993 Ahmed Hassan Zewail / for pioneering the development of laser femtochemistry. Using lasers and molecular beams, femtochemistry has made it now possible to probe the evolution of chemical reactions as they actually happen in real time. 1994/5 Richard Lerner Peter Schultz for developing catalytic antibodies, thus permitting the catalysis of chemical reactions considered impossible to achieve by classical chemical procedures. 1995/6 Gilbert Stork Samuel J. Danishefsky for designing and developing novel chemical reactions which have opened new avenues to the synthesis of complex molecules, particularly polysaccharides and many other biologically and medicinally important compounds. 1996/7 No award 1998 Gerhard Ertl Gabor A. Somorjai ; for their outstanding contributions to the field of the surface science in general, and for their elucidation of fundamental mechanisms of heterogeneous catalytic reactions at single crystal surfaces in particular. 1999 Raymond U. Lemieux for his fundamental and seminal contributions to the study and synthesis of oligosaccharides and to the elucidation of their role in molecular recognition in biological systems. 2000 Frank Albert Cotton for opening up an entirely new phase of transition metal chemistry based on pairs and clusters of metal atoms directly linked by single or multiple bonds. 2001 Henri B. Kagan Ryōji Noyori K. Barry Sharpless for their pioneering, creative and crucial work in developing asymmetric catalysis for the synthesis of chiral molecules, greatly increasing mankind's ability to create new products of fundamental and practical importance. 2002/3 No award 2004 Harry B. Gray for pioneering work in bio-inorganic chemistry, unravelling novel principles of structure and long-range electron transfer in proteins. 2005 Richard N. Zare for his ingenious applications of laser techniques, for identifying complex mechanisms in molecules, and their use in analytical chemistry. 2006/7 Ada Yonath George Feher for ingenious structural discoveries of the ribosomal machinery of peptide-bond formation and the light-driven primary processes in photosynthesis. 2008 William E. Moerner Allen J. Bard for the ingenious creation of a new field of science, single molecule spectroscopy and electrochemistry, with impact at the nanoscopic regime, from the molecular and cellular domain to complex material systems. 2009 No award 2010 No award 2011 Stuart A. Rice Ching W. Tang Krzysztof Matyjaszewski ; ; / for the deep creative contributions to the chemical sciences in the field of synthesis, properties and an understanding of organic materials. 2012 A. Paul Alivisatos for his development of the colloidal inorganic nanocrystal as a building block of nanoscience and for making fundamental contributions to controlling the synthesis of these particles, to measuring and understanding their physical properties.Berkeley Lab Charles M. Lieber for his seminal contributions to nanochemistry and particularly the synthesis of single-crystalline semiconductor nanowires, characterization of the fundamental physical properties of nanowires, and their application to electronics, photonics and nanomedicine.Lieber Research Group 2013 Robert S. Langer for conceiving and implementing advances in polymer chemistry that provide both controlled drug-release systems and new biomaterials. 2014 Chi-Huey Wong / for his numerous and original contributions to the development of innovative methods for the programmable and applied synthesis of complex oligosaccharides and glycol-proteins. 2015 No award 2016 Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou / for advancing the field of chemical synthesis to the extremes of molecular complexity, linking structure and function and expanding our dominion over the interface of chemistry, biology and medicine. Stuart Schreiber for pioneering chemical insights into the logic of signal transduction and gene regulation that led to important, new therapeutics and for advancing chemical biology and medicine through the discovery of small-molecule probes. 2017 Robert G. Bergman for his discovery of the activation responses of carbon-hydrogen bonds in hydrocarbons by soluble organometallic complexes. 2018 Omar M. Yaghi / for pioneering reticular chemistry via metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Makoto Fujita for conceiving metal-directed assembly principles leading to large highly porous complexes.2019 Stephen L. Buchwald John F. Hartwig for pioneering the development of transition metal catalyzed procedures that are broadly applicable and allow carbon-heteroatom bonds of all sorts to be formed with previously unknown efficiency and precision.Wolf Prize 2019 - Chemistry 2020 No award2021 Leslie Leiserowitz Meir Lahav for collaboratively established the fundamental reciprocal influences of three-dimensional molecular structure upon structures of organic crystals.2022 Bonnie L. Bassler Carolyn R. Bertozzi Benjamin F. Cravatt for their seminal contributions to understanding the chemistry of cellular communication and inventing chemical methodologies to study the role of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins in such biological processes.2023 Chuan He Hiroaki Suga Jeffery W. Kelly for pioneering discoveries that illuminate the functions and pathological dysfunctions of RNA and proteins and for creating strategies to harness the capabilities of these biopolymers in new ways to ameliorate human diseases.Wolf Prize 2023 - Chemistry 2024 No award 2025 Helmut F. Schwarz for quantifying reactive species in the gas phase to solve fundamental problems in catalysis.Laureate 20252026 David Klenerman Pascal Mayer Shankar Balasubramanian / for developing impactful, low-cost, large-scale DNA sequencing methods for genomic medicine.Wolf Prize 2026 - Chemistry

Laureates per country Below is a chart of all laureates per country (updated to 2026 laureates). Some laureates are counted more than once if they have multiple citizenships. CountryNumber of laureates39653333222111111

Wolf Prize in Chemistry

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