2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 9 October 2013.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Martin Karplus was born in 1930 in Vienna, Austria, and is affiliated with Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg and Harvard University, Cambridge. Michael Levitt was born in 1947 in Pretoria, South Africa, and is affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford. Arieh Warshel was born in 1940 in Kibbutz Sde-Nahum, British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel), and is affiliated with the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Why it matters

The three chemists combined classical and quantum physics in computer models that can simulate complex chemical reactions, now a standard tool in chemistry.

The prize

The prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. 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.