German Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

A German scientist whose studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces have implications for the environment won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today.

Gerhard Ertl’s work in surface chemistry has applications across a broad array of fields, and helps explain the processes in manufacturing computer chips, in the function of automobiles’ catalytic converters and on the surface of stratospheric ice crystals that have implications for global warming.

The $1.5 million prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Dr. Ertl’s 71st birthday, and he said in remarks broadcast from Stockholm that winning the prize “is the best birthday present that you can give to somebody.”

In an interview with the Associated Press from his office in Berlin, he said, “I am speechless.” He is an emeritus professor at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. “I was not counting on this,” he said.

In a statement released early today, Catherine T. Hunt, the president of the American Chemical Society, congratulated Dr. Ertl, calling him a “spectacular scientist” working in a field “that often receives little public attention, and yet has transformed lives in so many ways.” She said, “In the future, this research will help us tap new sources of renewable fuels, for instance, and produce smaller, more powerful electronics products.”

The Nobel prizes are being announced this week. On Monday, the prize that recognizes achievement in “physiology or medicine” went to Mario R. Capecchi, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans of Cardiff University in Wales, for their work that led to the technique of manipulating the genes of mice.

Tuesday’s award, in the field of physics, went to Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany, whose work in magnetics led to the development of the kinds of hard drives that have allowed computers and music players to shrink to tiny dimensions.

The awards are to be handed out by King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.


By JOHN SCHWARTZ