2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Gerhard Ertl. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 10 October 2007.

The citation

The citation reads: "for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces".

The laureate

Gerhard Ertl was born in 1936 in Bad Cannstatt, Germany, and is affiliated with Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin.

Why it matters

Ertl showed how chemical reactions take place on surfaces, such as the catalytic converters in cars and the iron catalysts used to make fertiliser.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.