The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1950 Otto Diels, Kurt Alder Award
Ceremony Speech Presentation Speech by Professor A. Fredga,
member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences Your Majesties, Royal Highnesses, Ladies
With this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry, the Academy of
Sciences wished to signalize the discovery and development of
diene synthesis. This achievement falls within the domain of
classical organic chemistry- the chemistry of carbon compounds.
The field in question is somewhat recondite and not easy to
describe in words "that everyone can understand" - a fact to
which the scientists whose task it has been to explain the Nobel
Prize in the press can testify. The chemistry of carbon
compounds is rather like a Chinese puzzle in which the pieces
consist of atoms - a puzzle with simple fixed rules and a great
many possible combinations. The task of the research scientist
is twofold: on the one hand he has to discover how Nature has
arranged the puzzle in the thousands