| Year | Name | Life | Field | Motivation |
|---|
| 1901 | Jacobus H. van 't Hoff | 1852-1911 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions" |
| 1903 | Svante Arrhenius | 1859-1927 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered to the advancement of chemistry by his electrolytic theory of dissociation" |
| 1909 | Wilhelm Ostwald | 1853-1932 | physical chemistry | "in recognition of his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction" |
| 1914 | Theodore W. Richards | 1868-1928 | physical chemistry | "in recognition of his accurate determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements" |
| 1920 | Walther Nernst | 1864-1941 | chemical thermodynamics, physical chemistry | "in recognition of his work in thermochemistry" |
| 1922 | Francis W. Aston | 1877-1945 | physical chemistry | "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule" |
| 1925 | Richard Zsigmondy | 1865-1929 | colloidal chemistry, physical chemistry | "for his demonstration of the heterogenous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid chemistry" |
| 1926 | The Svedberg | 1884-1971 | colloidal chemistry, physical chemistry | "for his work on disperse systems" |
| 1932 | Irving Langmuir | 1881-1957 | physical chemistry | "for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry" |
| 1934 | Harold C. Urey | 1893-1981 | nuclear chemistry, physical chemistry | "for his discovery of heavy hydrogen" |
| 1936 | Peter Debye | 1884-1966 | physical chemistry, structural chemistry | "for his contributions to our knowledge of molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments and on the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases" |
| 1948 | Arne Tiselius | 1902-1971 | analytical biochemistry, physical chemistry | "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins" |
| 1949 | William F. Giauque | 1895-1982 | chemical thermodynamics, physical chemistry | "for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures" |
| 1956 | Nikolay Semenov | 1896-1986 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions" |
| 1956 | Sir Cyril Hinshelwood | 1897-1967 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their researches into the mechanism of chemical reactions" |
| 1967 | George Porter | 1920-2002 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" |
| 1967 | Ronald G.W. Norrish | 1897-1978 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" |
| 1967 | Manfred Eigen | 1927- | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy" |
| 1968 | Lars Onsager | 1903-1976 | chemical thermodynamics, physical chemistry | "for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes" |
| 1971 | Gerhard Herzberg | 1904-1999 | molecular structures, physical chemistry | "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals" |
| 1974 | Paul J. Flory | 1910-1985 | polymer chemistry | "for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of the macromolecules" |
| 1977 | Ilya Prigogine | 1917-2003 | chemical thermodynamics, physical chemistry | "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures" |
| 1983 | Henry Taube | 1915-2005 | inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry | "for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes" |
| 1985 | Jerome Karle | 1918-2013 | physical chemistry, structural chemistry | "for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures" |
| 1985 | Herbert A. Hauptman | 1917-2011 | physical chemistry, structural chemistry | "for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures" |
| 1986 | John C. Polanyi | 1929- | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" |
| 1986 | Yuan T. Lee | 1936- | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" |
| 1986 | Dudley R. Herschbach | 1932- | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes" |
| 1999 | Ahmed Zewail | 1946-2016 | chemical kinetics, physical chemistry | "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy" |
| 2000 | Hideki Shirakawa | 1936- | physical chemistry | "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers" |
| 2000 | Alan MacDiarmid | 1927-2007 | physical chemistry | "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers" |
| 2000 | Alan Heeger | 1936- | physical chemistry | "for the discovery and development of conductive polymers" |
| 2011 | Dan Shechtman | 1941- | physical chemistry, structural chemistry | "for the discovery of quasicrystals" |
| 2013 | Arieh Warshel | 1940- | biochemistry, physical chemistry, theoretical chemistry | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" |
| 2013 | Michael Levitt | 1947- | biochemistry, physical chemistry, theoretical chemistry | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" |
| 2013 | Martin Karplus | 1930- | biochemistry, physical chemistry, theoretical chemistry | "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" |
| 2014 | William E. Moerner | 1953- | physical chemistry | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" |
| 2014 | Stefan W. Hell | 1962- | physical chemistry | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" |
| 2014 | Eric Betzig | 1960- | physical chemistry | "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" |