Nobel Prize Chemistry Quotes & Sayings

This [discovery of a cell-free yeast extract] will make him famous, even though he has no talent for chemistry.

{Comment on German scientist Eduard Buchner who later ironically won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery} — Adolf Von Baeyer

We suppose that could be considered a hedged position for the awards committee, one that would never occur in the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry, where a prize shared among three with divergent views would be an embarrassing mistake or a bad joke. While a Nobel Prize might well be the culmination of a life's work, shouldn't the work accurately describe the real world? — Seth Klarman

That work led to the emergence of the recombinant DNA technology thereby providing a major tool for analyzing mammalian gene structure and function and formed the basis for me receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. — Paul Berg

Ernest Rutherford's 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry wasn't given for the nuclear power station - he wouldn't have survived that long - it was given for showing how interesting atomic physics could be. — Andre Geim

I might paraphrase Churchill and say: never have I received so much for so little.
[Exemplifying humility, upon accepting the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.] — Luis Federico Leloir

The capital ... shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year ... One-fifth to the person having made the most important discovery or invention in the science of physics, one-fifth to the person who has made the most eminent discovery or improvement in chemistry, one-fifth to the one having made the most important discovery with regard to physiology or medicine, one-fifth to the person who has produced the most distinguished idealistic work of literature, and one-fifth to the person who has worked the most or best for advancing the fraternization of all nations and for abolishing or diminishing the standing armies as well as for the forming or propagation of committees of peace. — Alfred Nobel

I looked for it [heavy hydrogen, deuterium] because I thought it should exist. I didn't know it would have industrial applications or be the basic for the most powerful weapon ever known [the nuclear bomb] ... I thought maybe my discovery might have the practical value of, say, neon in neon signs.
[He was awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering deuterium.] — Harold Urey

I'm presently incarcerated. Convicted of a crime I didn't even commit. Hah! "Attempted murder"? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they? — Matt Groening

Svante Arrhenius, recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry (1903), was a declared atheist and the author of The Evolution of the Worlds and other works on cosmic physics. — Gordon Stein

A German and two American scientists won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for smashing the size barrier in optical microscopes, allowing researchers to see individual molecules inside living cells. — Anonymous