List of chemists
This is a list of chemists. It should include those who have been important to the development or practice of chemistry. Their research or application has made significant contributions in the area of basic or applied chemistry.
A
- Richard Abegg, German chemist
- Frederick Abel, English chemist
- Friedrich Accum, German chemist, advances in the field of gas lighting
- Homer Burton Adkins, American chemist, known for work in hydrogenation of organic compounds
- Peter Agre, American chemist and doctor, 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Georgius Agricola, German scholar known as "the father of mineralogy"
- Natalie Ahn, American chemist
- Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist
- Adrien Albert, Australian medicinal chemist
- John Albery, English physical chemist
- Kurt Alder, German chemist, 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Elmer Lucille Allen, American chemist and ceramic artist
- Heather C. Allen, American chemist
- Adah Almutairi, American chemist
- Sidney Altman, 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Faiza Al-Kharafi, Kuwaiti chemist and academic. She was the president of Kuwait University from 1993 to 2002, and the first woman to head a major university in the Middle East.
- Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, American chemist
- Gloria Long Anderson, American chemist
- Christian B. Anfinsen, 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Angelo Angeli, Italian chemist
- Octavio Augusto Ceva Antunes, Brazilian chemist
- Anthony Joseph Arduengo, III, American chemist
- Johan August Arfwedson, Swedish chemist
- Anton Eduard van Arkel, Dutch chemist
- Svante Arrhenius, Swedish chemist, one of the founders of physical chemistry
- Valerie Ashby, American chemist
- Barbara Askins, American chemist
- Larned B. Asprey, American nuclear chemist
- Francis William Aston, 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist and physicist, discovered Avogadro's law
B
- Stephen Moulton Babcock, worked on the "single-grain experiment"
- Myrtle Bachelder, American chemist noted for work on the Manhattan Project atomic bomb
- Werner Emmanuel Bachmann, American chemist, known for work in steroids and RDX
- Leo Baekeland, Belgian-American chemist
- Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist, 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, synthesis of indigo
- Piero Baglioni, Italian chemist
- Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom, Dutch chemist
- Alice Ball, African American chemist known for inventing an effective injectable treatment for leprosy
- Emily Balskus, American chemist and microbiologist
- Zhenan Bao, Chinese chemist known for developing technologies with organic field-effect transistors and organic semiconductors
- Allen J. Bard,, 2008 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Vincenzo Barone,, Italian chemist
- Neil Bartlett, English/Canadian/American chemist
- Sir Derek Barton, 1969 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Fred Basolo, American inorganic chemist
- Esther Batchelder, American chemist, educator and specialist in nutrition
- Antoine Baum, French chemist
- Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist
- Johann Joachim Becher, Developed the phlogiston theory of combustion
- Kathryn Beers, American polymer chemist
- Friedrich Konrad Beilstein, German-Russian chemist, created Beilstein database
- Joseph Achille Le Bel, French chemist, early work in stereochemistry
- Angela Belcher, American chemist, materials scientist, and biological engineer
- Irina Beletskaya, Russian organometallic chemist
- Ronnie Bell, English physical chemist
- Francesco Bellini, research scientist, doctor in organic chemistry
- Ruth R. Benerito, American chemist known for inventions relating to textiles
- Paul Berg, 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Friedrich Bergius, 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Helen M. Berman, American chemist
- Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist, important work in thermochemistry
- Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist
- Carolyn R. Bertozzi, American chemist, Stanford
- Guy Bertrand French chemist, UCSD
- Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist, coined the term "polymer" in 1833
- Johannes Martin Bijvoet, Dutch chemist and crystallographer
- Leonora Bilger, American chemist who studied nitrogenous compounds
- Hazel Bishop, American chemist and cosmetics inventor
- Katherine Bitting, Canadian and American food chemist for the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Canners Association
- Joseph Black, chemist
- Katharine Burr Blodgett, American surface chemist and physicist and inventor of nonreflective glass
- Suzanne Blum, American chemist
- Katharine Blunt, American chemist and nutritionist focusing on home economics, food chemistry and nutrition
- Kristie Boering, American chemist and Earth and planetary scientist
- Dale L. Boger, American organic and medicinal chemist
- Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, French chemist
- Jan Boldingh, Dutch chemist
- Alexander Borodin, Russian chemist and composer
- Hans-Joachim Born, German radiochemist
- Carl Bosch, German chemist
- Octave Leopold Boudouard, French chemist who discovered the Boudouard reaction
- Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, French chemist, agricultural chemistry
- E. J. Bowen, English physical chemist
- Humphry Bowen, English analytical chemist
- Paul D. Boyer, 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Robert Boyer, employee of Henry Ford focus on soybean use.
- Robert Boyle, English pioneer of modern chemistry
- Henri Braconnot, French chemist and pharmacist
- Henning Brand, German chemist, discovered phosphorus
- Mary Bidwell Breed, American chemist focusing on aromatic acids, first woman dean of Indiana University
- Ronald Breslow,, American organic chemist
- Alan Brisdon, British Chemist
- Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted, Danish chemist
- Herbert C. Brown, 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Jeannette Brown, American organic medicinal chemist, historian, and author
- Jeanette Grasselli Brown, American analytical chemist and spectroscopist
- Rachel Fuller Brown, American chemist who co-developed the first useful antifungal antibiotic
- Eduard Buchner, 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Stephen L. Buchwald,, American Chemist, Organic Chemistry, co-discoverer of Palladium-catalyzed C-N bond formation Buchwald–Hartwig amination
- Mary Van Rensselaer Buell, American chemist who did early research in nutrition and physiological chemistry
- Kathryn Bullock, American chemist who co-developed valve-regulated lead-acid batteries
- Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German inventor, chemist, discovered the elements caesium and rubidium with Gustav Kirchhoff and invented the Bunsen burner
- Jeanne Burbank, American chemist who developed lead-acid and silver-zinc batteries for submarines at the United States Naval Research Laboratory
- Stephanie Burns, American organosilicon chemist and past honorary president of Society of Chemical Industry
- William Merriam Burton, American chemist, developed the first thermal cracking process for crude oil
- Adolf Butenandt, 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Alison Butler, American bioinorganic chemist and metallobiochemist
- Aleksandr Butlerov, Russian chemist, discovered the formose reaction
C
- Mary Letitia Caldwell, American chemist who developed a method for purifying crystalline porcine pancreatic amylase
- Melvin Calvin, American chemist, winner of 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Allison A. Campbell, American chemist studying biomineralization, biomimetics and biomaterials
- Constantin Cândea, Romanian chemist
- Stanislao Cannizzaro, Italian chemist, postulated the Cannizzaro reaction
- Georg Ludwig Carius, German chemist
- Heinrich Caro, German chemist
- Wallace Carothers, American chemist, known for the discovery of nylon
- Emma P. Carr, American spectroscopist
- Marjorie Constance Caserio, American chemist, winner of the American Chemical Society's Garvan Medal
- Marta Catellani, Italian chemist, discovered the Catellani reaction
- Henry Cavendish, British scientist
- Elena Ceaușescu
- Thomas Cech, 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Martin Chalfie, 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Michelle Chang, American chemist, Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
- Yves Chauvin, 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Michel Eugėne Chevreul, French chemist, designed an early form of soap, lived to be 102.
- Christine S. Chow, American chemist
- Aaron Ciechanover, 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Giacomo Luigi Ciamician, Italian chemist, father of the solar panel
- G. Marius Clore FRS, American chemist and Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Known for foundational work in three-dimensional protein and nucleic acid structure determination by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
- Edward L. Cochran, American Chemist, known for pioneering studies on the nature of free radicals
- Ernst Cohen, Dutch chemist
- Mildred Cohn, American chemist who studied chemical reactions within animal cells
- David Collison, British Chemist
- Vicki Colvin, Director of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at Brown University
- James Bryant Conant, American organic Chemist, Priestley Medal 1944
- Elias James Corey, American organic chemist, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Robert Corey, American biochemist
- Carl Ferdinand Cori, Czech biochemist, Nobel Prize in medicine 1947
- Gerty Cori, American biochemist, Nobel Prize in medicine 1947
- Charles D. Coryell, American chemist, co-discovered the element promethium
- John Cornforth, Australian winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Brigid Cotter, Irish chemist and barrister
- Frank Albert Cotton, 2000 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Charles Coulson, British theoretical chemist
- Archibald Scott Couper, English chemist, further developed Tetravalence
- James Crafts, American chemist, developer of Friedel–Crafts reaction
- Donald J. Cram, American chemist, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- William Crookes, British chemist, discovered the element thallium
- Paul J. Crutzen, Dutch chemist, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ana Maria Cuervo, Spanish-American physician, researcher, and cell biologist
- Marie Curie, Polish radiation physicist, 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics, 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Pierre Curie, 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics
- Robert Curl, American chemist, winner of 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Theodor Curtius, German chemist
- Emil Czyrniański, Polish chemist
D
- John Dalton, physicist and pioneer of the atomic theory
- Marie Maynard Daly, American biochemist and the first African American woman in the United States to earn a PhD in chemistry
- Carl Peter Henrik Dam, Danish biochemist, winner of the 1943 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Vincenzo, Count Dandolo, Italian Nobleman and Chemist
- Samuel J. Danishefsky, American organic chemist, natural product Total synthesis, 1995/6 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Humphry Davy, British Chemist, discovered several alkaline earth metals
- Raymond Davis, Jr., American physical chemist
- Serena DeBeer is an American chemist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion
- Peter Debye, Dutch chemist, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Johann Deisenhofer, 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Francesco DeMaria, Italian-American chemist, working in Chemical engineering
- Sir James Dewar
- François Diederich, Luxembourg chemist
- Otto Diels, German chemist, winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Robert Dirks, American computational chemist
- Martha Doan, American chemist who studied thallium compounds
- William von Eggers Doering, American chemist
- Edward Doisy, American biochemist, winner of the 1943 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Davorin Dolar, chemist from Univ. of Ljubljana
- Vy Maria Dong, American chemist who studies enantioselective catalysis and natural product synthesis
- David Adriaan van Dorp, Dutch chemist
- Israel Dostrovsky, Russian -born Israeli physical chemist, fifth president of the Weizmann Institute of Science
- Herbert Henry Dow, American industrial chemist, known for bromine extraction
- Cornelius Drebbel, Dutch inventor, alchemist and chemist
- Vratislav Ducháček, Czech chemist
- Carl Duisberg, German chemist, early administrative industrial chemist
- Jean Baptiste Dumas, French chemist, work on atomic weights
- Helen Dyer, American biochemist and early cancer researcher
E
- Sandra Eaton, American chemist notable for work on electron paramagnetic resonance
- Eilaf Egap, American chemist
- Paul Ehrlich, German chemist, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Arthur Eichengrün
- Manfred Eigen, German chemist, winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Mostafa El-Sayed, Egyptian-American physical chemist
- Fausto Elhuyar, Spanish chemist, discoverer of tungsten
- Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and recipient of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Conrad Elvehjem, American biochemist, discovered niacin
- Harry Julius Emeléus, British inorganic chemist
- Gladys Anderson Emerson, American chemist and early nutritionist, and the first person to isolate Vitamin E
- Emil Erlenmeyer, German chemist
- Richard R. Ernst,, 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Gerhard Ertl, German physical chemist, 2007 Nobel prize in chemistry
- Margaret C. Etter, American chemist and developer of solid state chemistry for crystalline organic compounds
- Hans von Euler-Chelpin, Swedish chemist, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Henry Eyring, Mexican-American theoretical chemist
- Evelyn Hickmans, British chemist, received the John Scott Medal for developing methods to control phenylketonuria
F
- Kazimierz Fajans, Polish-American physical chemist
- Michael Faraday, chemist and physicist, discovered Benzene
- Hermann von Fehling, German chemist
- John Bennett Fenn, 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Enrico Fermi, Nuclear Chemist and Elementary Particle Physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1938
- Mary Peters Fieser, American chemist and author of chemistry books
- Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts, Canadian-American atmospheric chemist
- Hermann Emil Fischer, 1902 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, not to be confused with:
- Franz Joseph Emil Fischer, German chemist, co-discovered the Fischer-Tropsch process
- Emily V. Fischer, American chemist notable for work on the WE-CAN project and on peroxyacetyl nitrate
- Ernst Gottfried Fischer, German chemist
- Ernst Otto Fischer, German chemist, 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner
- Hans Fischer, German organic chemist, 1930 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner
- Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig, German chemist, co-discovered Wurtz–Fittig reaction
- Edith M. Flanigen, American chemist known for synthesizing emeralds and zeolites
- Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, co-discovered the element Iridium and developed modern chemical notation
- Nicolas Flamel, French alchemist
- Paul Flory, 1974 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Maria Forsyth, Australian researcher, new plastic materials for batteries
- Margaret D. Foster, Manhattan Project chemist and the first female chemist to work for the United States Geological Survey
- Joanna Fowler, American neural chemist
- Michelle Francl, American computational chemist
- Edward Frankland, English chemist, originated the concept of valence
- Rosalind Franklin, British Chemist and Crystallographer
- Katherine Franz, American chemist noted for work in metal ion coordination in biological systems
- Herman Frasch, German mining engineer and inventor, pioneered the Frasch process
- Helen Murray Free, American chemist who developed self-testing systems for diabetes
- Carl Remigius Fresenius, German chemist
- Ida Freund, first woman to be a university chemistry lecturer in the UK.
- Charles Friedel, French chemist, developer of Friedel–Crafts reaction
- Alexander Naumovich Frumkin, electrochemist and chemist
- Kenichi Fukui, 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
G
- Johan Gadolin, Finnish chemist
- Merrill Garnett, American biochemist
- Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist and physicist, discovered the Gay-Lussac law
- Charles Frédéric Gerhardt, French chemist, synthesized acetylsalicylic acid
- William Giauque, 1949 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Josiah Willard Gibbs, American engineer, chemist and physicist
- Walter Gilbert, 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Henry Gilman, American chemist, discovered the Gilman reagent
- Johann Rudolf Glauber, Dutch-German alchemist and chemist
- Lawrence E. Glendenin, American chemist, co-discovered the element promethium
- Leopold Gmelin, German chemist, discovered potassium ferricyanide
- Theodore Nicolas Gobley, French chemist, pioneer in brain tissues analysis, discoverer of lecithin
- Sulamith Goldhaber, Austrian-American chemist, high-energy physicist, and molecular spectroscopist
- Victor Goldschmidt Father of Modern Geochemistry
- Moses Gomberg, Russian-American chemist, known for pioneering work in radical chemistry
- Mary L. Good, American inorganic chemist
- David van Goorle also called Gorlaeus,, Dutch chemist, one of the first modern atomists
- Loney Gordon, American chemist who assisted in creating the pertussis vaccine
- Carl Gräbe, German chemist, discovered the dye alizarin
- Thomas Graham, Scottish chemist, dialysis and diffusion
- Harry B. Gray, 2004 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Martha Greenblatt, American solid state inorganic chemist, 2003 American Chemical Society’s Garvan-Olin Medal
- Bettye Washington Greene, American researcher on latex and polymers
- Sandra C. Greer American chemist notable for work on thermodynamics of fluids, polymer solutions and phase transitions
- François Auguste Victor Grignard, 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry corecipient
- Robert H. Grubbs, 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
H
- Fritz Haber, German chemist, 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, father of the Haber process
- Dorothy Hahn, early American organic chemist and ultraviolet spectroscopist
- Otto Hahn, German chemist, discoverer of nuclear fission, 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, father of nuclear chemistry
- Sossina M. Haile, American chemist notable for developing the first solid acid fuel cells
- Naomi Halas, American biochemist focusing on nanoshells and nanophotonics
- John Scott Haldane, British biochemist
- Charles Martin Hall, American chemist, famous for Hall-Héroult process
- George S. Hammond, American chemist, famous for Hammond's postulate
- Arthur Harden, English biochemist and winner of the shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1929
- Elizabeth Hardy, American chemist and discoverer of the Cope rearrangement
- Anna J. Harrison, first female President of the American Chemical Society
- Odd Hassel, Norwegian chemist 1969 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Charles Hatchett, English chemist who discovered niobium
- Herbert A. Hauptman, 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Robert Havemann, chemist
- Walter Haworth, 1937 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Sam Hay, New Zealand Chemist
- Alma Levant Hayden, American spectrophotometer at the National Institutes of Health
- Jabir Ibn Hayyan, Persian-Arab chemist and alchemist
- Clayton Heathcock, American chemist
- Alan J. Heeger, 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Jan Baptist van Helmont, The founder of pneumatic chemistry
- Dudley R. Herschbach, American chemist, 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Avram Hershko, 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Charles Herty, American chemist
- Gerhard Herzberg, German-Canadian chemist, 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Germain Henri Hess, Swiss-born Russian chemist, namesake of Hess's Law
- George de Hevesy, Hungarian born chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry 1943
- Jaroslav Heyrovský, Czech chemist, 1959 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Mary Elliott Hill, American chemist who developed analytic methodology for ultraviolet light
- Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English physical chemist and winner of the shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1956
- Gladys Lounsbury Hobby, American microbiologist known for development and early understanding of antibiotics
- Dorothy Hodgkin, 1964 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch physical chemist, 1901 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist, synthesized Lysergic acid diethylamide
- August Wilhelm Hofmann, German chemist, first to isolate sorbic acid
- Darleane C. Hoffman, American Nuclear Chemist
- Friedrich Hoffmann, physician and chemist
- Roald Hoffmann, Polish-born American chemist, 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Mei Hong, Chinese-American biophysical chemist
- Frederick Gowland Hopkins, British biochemist, known for discovery of vitamins, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929
- Marjorie G. Horning, American biochemist and pioneer of chromatography
- Linda Hsieh-Wilson, American chemist, California Institute of Technology
- Heinrich Hubert Maria Josef Houben German organic chemist
- Coenraad Johannes van Houten, Dutch chemist and chocolate maker, invented cocoa powder
- Amir H. Hoveyda, U.S.-based chemist working in asymmetric catalysis
- Benjamin Hsiao, Asian American chemist at Stony Brook University, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the American Chemical Society, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Marcia Huber, American chemical engineer and 2005 Department of Commerce Bronze Medal winner
- Robert Huber, 1988 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Catherine T. Hunt, American chemist, president American Chemical Society and Dow Chemical Company director
I
- Sir Christopher Kelk Ingold, English chemist
- Vladimir Ipatieff, Russian-American chemist, known for organic synthesis
J
- Nancy B. Jackson, American chemist
- Marilyn E. Jacox, American chemist and National Institute of Standards and Technology fellow
- Hope Jahren, American chemist and isotope analyst
- Paul Janssen, Belgian founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica
- Allene Jeanes, American chemist who developed Dextran to replace plasma in the Korean War
- Frédéric Joliot-Curie, French chemist and physicist, 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Irène Joliot-Curie, French chemist and physicist, 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Madeleine M. Joullié, French-American organic chemist and first woman to have an American tenure track position in organic chemistry
- Percy Lavon Julian, American organic chemist
K
- Henri B. Kagan, 2001 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Isabella Karle, American chemist instrumental for extracting plutonium chloride from a mixture containing plutonium oxide
- Jerome Karle, 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Paul Karrer, 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner
- Joyce Jacobson Kaufman, American chemist and inventor of conformational topology
- Melinda H. Keefe, American chemist and research and development director at the Dow Chemical Company
- August Kekulé, German organic chemist
- Sinah Estelle Kelley, American chemist who helped pioneer mass production of penicillin
- John Kendrew, 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ann Kiessling, American chemist and reproductive biologist
- Petrus Jacobus Kipp, Dutch chemist, inventor of Kipp-generator
- Johan Kjeldahl, Danish chemist, head chemist at Carlsberg Brewery, methods still in use
- Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist, discovered the element uranium
- Trevor Kletz British promoter of industrial safety
- Aaron Klug, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Emil Knoevenagel
- William Standish Knowles,, 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Walter Kohn,, 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe, German chemist known for Kolbe nitrile synthesis
- Izaak Kolthoff, Dutch-American chemist, the "Father of Analytical Chemistry"
- Roger D. Kornberg, 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Hans A. Krebs, German biochemist, work on metabolic cycles
- Harold Kroto, English chemist, 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Richard Kuhn, 1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
L
- Irving Langmuir, chemist, physicist, 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Auguste Laurent, French chemist, discovered anthracene
- Paul Lauterbur, American chemist
- Antoine Lavoisier, French pioneer chemist
- Nicolas Leblanc, French chemist and surgeon
- Henri Louis Le Chatelier
- Yuan T. Lee, winner of 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Valery Legasov, Soviet inorganic chemist known for his position as head of the Chernobyl Commission for the Chernobyl Disaster.
- Jean-Marie Lehn, French chemist, shared 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Luis Federico Leloir, Argentine biochemist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Raymond Lemieux, 1999 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Gilbert Newton Lewis, American chemist and first Dean of the Berkeley College of Chemistry
- Andreas Libavius, German doctor and chemist
- Carl Theodore Liebermann, German chemist, known for synthesis of alizarin
- Willard Libby, American chemist, winner of 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Justus von Liebig, German inventor and pioneer in agricultural and biological chemistry
- Karl Paul Link, American biochemist, discovered the anticoagulant warfarin.
- William Lipscomb, 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, English surgeon
- Arthur H. Livermore, science educator and chemist
- Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian scientist, anticipated the kinetic-molecular theory by 100 years
- H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins, British chemist
- Martin Lowry, British chemist
- Sima Lozanić, Serbian chemist
- Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Polish pharmacist
M
- Alan MacDiarmid, 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Carolina Henriette Mac Gillavry, Dutch chemist and crystallographer
- Roderick MacKinnon, 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Pierre Macquer, influential French chemist
- Rudolph A. Marcus, 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Jacob A. Marinsky, American chemist, co-discovered the element promethium
- Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac, Swiss chemist, discovered ytterbium and co-discovered gadolinium.
- Vladimir Vasilevich Markovnikov
- Tobin J. Marks, American inorganic chemist and material scientist
- Alan G. Marshall, American chemist, co-inventor of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry
- Archer John Porter Martin, 1952 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Martinus van Marum, Dutch chemist
- Elmer McCollum, American biochemist, known for work of diet on health
- Edwin McMillan, 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Lise Meitner, German physicist
- Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, Russian chemist, creator of the Periodic table of elements
- John Mercer, chemist and industrialist
- Robert Bruce Merrifield, solid-phase chemist, 1984 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Julius Lothar Meyer, German chemist, important work on The periodic table of elements; not to be confused with:
- Viktor Meyer
- Dan Meyerstein, Israeli chemist and president of Ariel University
- August Michaelis, German chemist
- Hartmut Michel, 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Huang Minlon, Chinese chemist
- Stanley Miller, American chemist, best known for the Miller–Urey experiment
- David P. Mills, British chemist
- Luis E. Miramontes, co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive pill
- Peter D. Mitchell, 1978 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- William A. Mitchell, key inventor behind Pop Rocks, Tang, and Kool Whip
- Eilhardt Mitscherlich German chemist, remembered for the law of isomorphism.
- Alexander Mitscherlich, chemist
- Karl Friedrich Mohr, German chemist famous for first musings on the Conservation of energy
- Henri Moissan, French chemist and the winner of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Mario J. Molina, 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Jacques Monod, biochemist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965
- Jeffrey S. Moore, American material chemist
- Peter Moore, American biochemist, Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University
- Stanford Moore, 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley, English physicist, discovered Moseley's law
- Gerardus Johannes Mulder, Dutch organic chemist
- Paul Müller, Swiss chemist, discovered DDT, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939
- Robert S. Mulliken, American physicist, chemist, 1966 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Kary Mullis, 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Earl Muetterties, American chemist
- Catherine J. Murphy, American chemist and materials scientist
N
- Robert Nalbandyan, Armenian protein chemist
- Louise Natrajan, British chemist
- Giulio Natta, Italian chemist, 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Costin Nenitescu, Romanian chemist
- Antonio Neri, Florentine chemist and glassmaker
- Walther Nernst, German chemist, 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- John Alexander Reina Newlands, English analytical chemist
- William Nicholson, English chemist
- Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou, American chemist
- Julius Nieuwland, American chemist, work on synthetic rubber leading to neoprene
- Mathias Nilsson, Swedish chemist
- Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist
- Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- John Howard Northrop, 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ryōji Noyori, 2001 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ralph Nuzzo, American chemist and materials scientist
O
- George Andrew Olah, 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Fred Olsen, inventor of the ball propellant manufacturing process
- Lars Onsager, physical chemist, 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Tony Orchard, British inorganic chemist, photoelectron spectroscopist
- Joan Oró, Catalan biochemist, one of his most important contributions was the prebiotic synthesis of the nucleobase adenine from hydrogen cyanide.
- Hans Christian Ørsted, first to isolate aluminium
- Wilhelm Ostwald, 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
P
- Paracelsus, alchemist
- Rudolph Pariser, theoretical and organic chemist
- Robert G. Parr, theoretical chemist
- Louis Pasteur, French biochemist, father of pasteurization
- Linus Pauling, Nobel Prizes in chemistry and peace
- Charles J. Pedersen, 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Eugène-Melchior Péligot, French chemist who isolated the uranium metal
- William Henry Perkin, British organic chemist and inventor of mauveine
- William Henry Perkin, Jr., British organic chemist, son of Sir William Henry Perkin
- Max Perutz, 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Eva Philbin, Irish chemist
- David Andrew Phoenix, biochemist
- Roy J. Plunkett, discoverer of Teflon
- John Charles Polanyi, Canadian chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1986.
- John A. Pople, theoretical chemist, 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Vera Vevstafievna Popova, one of the first female Russian chemists.
- George Porter, 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Fritz Pregl, Slovene-German chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1923.
- Vladimir Prelog, 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Joseph Priestley, no formal training as a scientist, discovered the element oxygen
- Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Joseph Louis Proust, discovered the Law of definite proportions
R
- Venkatraman Ramakrishnan,, 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- William Ramsay, Scottish chemist, 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- C. N. R. Rao, Indian chemist
- François-Marie Raoult, French chemist, known for Raoult's law
- Henry Rapoport, American chemist, UC Berkeley
- William Sage Rapson, South African chemist and co-author of Gold Usage
- Ken Raymond, American inorganic and bioinorganic chemist, UC Berkeley
- Julius Rebek, Hungarian American chemist
- Charles Lee Reese, American chemist and Chemical Director of DuPont
- Henri Victor Regnault, French chemist and physicist
- Tadeus Reichstein, chemist, 1950 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Rhazes , Iranian chemist
- Stuart A. Rice, physical chemist
- Ellen Swallow Richards, industrial and environmental chemist
- Theodore William Richards, 1914 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Wim Richter, South Africa
- Jeremias Benjamin Richter, German chemist, first used the term stoichiometry
- Nikolaus Riehl, German chemist
- Andrés Manuel del Río, Spanish-Mexican geochemist, discovered vanadium
- Robert Robinson, 1947 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Pierre Jean Robiquet, French chemist, discovered caffeine, alizarin, cantharidin
- Hillar Rootare, Estonian-American physical chemist
- Irwin Rose, 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Guillaume-François Rouelle, French chemist
- H. M. Rouell, French chemist
- Frank Sherwood Rowland, 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Daniel Rutherford, Scottish chemist
- Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand born chemist and nuclear physicist. Discovered the proton. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908
- Leopold Ruzicka , 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
S
- Paul Sabatier, 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry corecipient
- Ja'far al-Sadiq, Chemist and teacher of Jabir Bin Hayyan
- Frederick Sanger, 1958 and 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish 18th century chemist, discovered numerous elements
- Christian Friedrich Schönbein, German-Swiss chemist, invented the fuel cell, and discovered gun cotton and ozone.
- Stuart L. Schreiber, American chemist, a pioneer in a field of chemical biology
- Richard R. Schrock, 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Peter Schultz, American chemist
- Glenn T. Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Nils Gabriel Sefström, chemist
- Francesco Selmi, Italian chemist
- Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov, physicist and chemist, 1956 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- K. Barry Sharpless,, 2001 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Dan Shechtman, 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, discovered quasicrystals
- Patsy O. Sherman, 12 US patents
- Nevil Vincent Sidgwick, English theoretical chemist, known for work in valency
- Osamu Shimomura, 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Hideki Shirakawa, 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Alexander Shulgin, pioneer researcher in Psychopharmacology and Entheogens
- Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani chemist, pioneer in natural products chemistry
- Oktay Sinanoglu, Turkish chemist
- Joseph H. Simons, U.S. chemist, discoverer of fluorocarbons, used in gaseous diffusion of Uranium for Manhattan project
- Jens Christian Skou, 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Richard Smalley, 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Michael Smith, 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ascanio Sobrero, Italian chemist, discoverer of nitroglycerin
- Frederick Soddy, British chemist, 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Susan Solomon, American atmospheric chemist
- Ernest Solvay, Belgian chemist and industrialist
- S.P.L. Sørensen, Danish chemist
- Gabor A. Somorjai, 1998 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Georg Ernst Stahl, Important work on fermentation
- Wendell Meredith Stanley, 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Jean Servais Stas, Belgian analytical chemist
- Branko Stanovnik, chemist
- Hermann Staudinger, polymer chemist, 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Harry Steenbock, American biochemist, work on ultra violet irradiation
- William Howard Stein, 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Thomas A. Steitz, 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Alfred Stock, German inorganic chemist, known for work in mercury poisoning
- Fraser Stoddart, Scottish chemist, a pioneer in the field of the mechanical bond
- Molly Shoichet, award-winning Canadian biomedical engineer known for her work in tissue engineering. She is the only person to be a fellow of the three National Academies in Canada.
- F. Gordon A. Stone, British inorganic chemist
- S. Donald Stookey, American glass and ceramic chemist
- Gilbert Stork, 1995/6 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, German organic chemist, principal founder of chemical structure
- James B. Sumner, 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Kenneth S. Suslick, professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, known for optoelectronic nose
- Edwin Sutermeister, American chemist, known for its work on papermaking
- Theodor Svedberg, 1926 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Joseph Swan, English physicist, chemist and inventor
- Frédéric Swarts, Belgian chemist, prepared the first chlorofluorocarbon compound
- Richard Laurence Millington Synge, 1952 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
T
- Koichi Tanaka, 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Henry Taube, 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Louis Jacques Thénard, French chemist, discovered hydrogen peroxide and Thenard's Blue.
- Sir Harold Warris Thompson, English physical chemist
- J. J. Thomson, British physicist, Known in chemistry for discovery of isotopes
- T. Don Tilley, organometallic chemist
- Arne Tiselius, 1948 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Max Tishler, 1970 Priestley Medal
- Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd, 1957 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Evangelista Torricelli, Italian physicist and chemist who invented the barometer, pupil of Galileo
- Roger Y. Tsien, 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Mikhail Tsvet, Russian botanist, known for adsorption chromatography
- Kristy Turner, British chemist
U
- Georges Urbain, French chemist, discovered the element lutetium
- Harold Clayton Urey, 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
V
- Lauri Vaska, Estonian/American chemist
- Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, Discovered the elements beryllium and chromium
- Vincent du Vigneaud, 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- Max Volmer, Germany
- Alessandro Volta, electrochemist, invented the voltaic cell
W
- Johannes Diderik van der Waals
- Sir James Walker, Scottish physical chemist
- John E. Walker, 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Otto Wallach, German chemist, 1910 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- John Warner, American chemist, 2014 Perkin Medal, one of the "founders" of green chemistry
- Alfred Werner, Swiss chemist, 1913 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Thomas Summers West, British analytical chemist
- Peter Jaffrey Wheatley
- Chaim Weizmann, Russian chemist, developed the ABE-process
- George M. Whitesides, American chemist
- John Rex Whinfield, British chemist, discovered polyester fibres
- Heinrich Otto Wieland, German chemist 1927 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Julius Wilbrand, inventor of TNT
- Harvey W. Wiley, American chemist, pure food and drug advocate
- Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson, 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Alexander William Williamson, English chemist, famous for Williamson ether synthesis
- Thomas Willson, Canadian chemist, discovered an economically efficient process for creating calcium carbide
- Richard Willstätter, 1915 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, 1928 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Günter Wirths, Germany
- Georg Wittig, 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Friedrich Wöhler, German chemist, best known for his synthesis of urea
- William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist, discovered the elements palladium and rhodium
- Robert B. Woodward, 1965 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Charles de Worms
- Charles-Adolphe Wurtz, Alsatian French chemist, discovered the Wurtz reaction
- Kurt Wüthrich, 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
X
- Xiaoliang Sunney Xie, chemist at Harvard University. A pioneer in the field of Single Molecule Microscopy and CARS microscopy.
- Xie Yi, Chinese chemist, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Y
- Ada Yonath, 2006/7 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Sabir Yunusov, Soviet chemist
Z
- Richard Zare, 2005 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
- Ahmed H. Zewail, Egyptian, 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry.
- Karl Ziegler, 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Richard Adolf Zsigmondy, 1925 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Chemists famous in other areas
- Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of China
- Marion Barry, Masters in Organic Chemistry, American politician
- Alexander Borodin, Russian chemist and composer
- Jerry Buss, PhD in Physical Chemistry, owner of the NBA LA Lakers and other sports franchises
- Catherine Coleman, American chemist and retired NASA astronaut who went on two Space Shuttle missions
- Emmanuel Dongala, Congolese chemist and novelist
- Elizabeth J. Feinler, American information scientist and past director of the Network Information Systems Center at the Stanford Research Institute
- Marye Anne Fox, American chemist and university chancellor
- Dolph Lundgren, Masters in Chemistry, Swedish actor
- Primo Levi, resistance fighter, chemist and novelist
- Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian chemist, historian, philologist, and poet.
- Angela Merkel, doctorate in quantum chemistry, Chancellor of Germany
- Gaspard Monge, invented descriptive geometry
- Francis Muguet, advocate of open information access
- Edward W. Morley, performed the Michelson–Morley experiment
- Knute Rockne, head football coach of Notre Dame
- Elio Di Rupo, Prime Minister of Belgium
- Israel Shahak
- Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, research chemist at BX Plastics