Nobel Laureates

Over the years, members of the International Atomic Weights Commission have had several encounters with the Nobel Prizes. In fact, the very idea of creating the Commission came in 1897 from soon-to-be Nobel Laureate Hermann Emil Fisher. Since the establishment of the International Atomic Weights Commission in 1899, six members have been awarded the Nobel Prize:
    Marie Curie (Physics 1903 and Chemistry 1911),
    Henri Moissan (Chemistry 1906),
    Wilhelm Ostwald (Chemistry 1909),
    Theodore W. Richards (Chemistry 1914),
    Frederick Soddy (Chemistry 1921), and
    Francis W. Aston (Chemistry 1922).
Incidentally, the 1925 Atomic Weights report was signed by three Nobel laureates. In addition to the above six laureates, many former members of CIAAW have been nominated for the Nobel Prize. Among these distinguished members are the first three Chairmen of the Commission:
    Hans H. Landolt,
    Frank W. Clarke, and
    Georges Urbain.
In fact, the Nobel Prize Nomination Archive shows that Georges Urbain has been nominated 56 times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from 1912-1939. Among other Commission members nominated for the Nobel Prize are Philippe A. Guye (nominated 18 times), André-Louis Debierne, Paul Lebeau, Otto Hönigschmid, Marguerite Perey, Joseph Mattauch, and Alfred O. Nier.

Several Commission members have also served as nominators for the Nobel Prizes, most notably, Bohuslav Brauner who successfully contributed with the 1904 nomination of Sir William Ramsay and with the 1914 nomination of Theodore Richards.

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Since its establishment in 1899, six members of the International Atomic Weights Commission have been awarded the Nobel Prize

An Ode to the Atomic Weights in Nature Chemistry 2014 (6) 749-750 by Juris Meija reflects on the 100th anniversary of the 1914 Nobel Prize to Theodore W. Richards for his determination of atomic weights.