Karl Barry Sharpless, an American chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday and in 2001, became the fifth person to receive two Nobel Prizes.
Here is the list of people who have received the prestigious award twice for their contributions to humanity-
1. Marie Curie (1903, 1911)
The mother of modern physics was the first woman to receive not one, but two Nobel prizes for her contributions to physics and chemistry.
Curie, who was born Maria Sklodowska in Poland, moved to Paris as a student and is famous for isolating the elements polonium and radium as well as promoting radium to alleviate suffering.
She shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband, Pierre Curie, and French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel in 1903 for their work on spontaneous radiation.
In 1911, Curie received a second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry, for her work on radioactivity.
2. John Bardeen (1956, 1972)
John Bardeen, a US engineer, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics twice.
In 1956, he and two Bell Labs colleagues, William Shockley and Walter Brattain, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the transistor, which revolutionized the field of electronics by allowing for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and computers, among other things.
He received his second Nobel Prize in 1972 for co-developing the BSC-theory of superconductivity with fellow American physicists Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer.
3. Frederick Sanger (1958, 1980)
Frederick Sanger, the father of genomics, was the first person to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry twice.
Sanger received the prize as the sole winner in 1958 for his work on the structure of proteins, particularly insulin, and then shared it with two others, Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert of the United States, in 1980 for pioneering developments in DNA sequencing that are still used today.
His work enabled long stretches of DNA to be sequenced quickly and accurately.
4. Linus Pauling (1954, 1962)
Linus Pauling, the US chemist who proposed that large doses of vitamin C could prevent the common cold, is the only person to have received both the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize.
Pauling received his first Nobel Prize in 1954 for his contributions to molecular chemistry, specifically proteins, and anti-bodies.
His second award came eight years later, in 1962, in recognition of his anti-nuclear-testing activism.
5. K. Barry Sharpless (2001, 2022)
Barry Sharpless, 81, of the United States, became the fifth person in history to win two Nobel Prizes for Chemistry in 2022 when he shared the award with Carolyn Bertozzi and Morten Meldal in discovering reactions that allow molecules to snap together to form new compounds and provide insight into cell biology.
His previous award was given in 2001 “for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions,” a method that has allowed for the production of safer and more effective antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, heart medicines, and agricultural chemicals.
ICRC and UNHCR
Two organizations have received several Nobel Peace Prizes.
The International Committee of the Red Cross won the Nobel Prize in 1917, 1944, and 1963, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees won it in 1954 and 1981.
