Chemistry Nobel predictions range from free-radical chemistry to MOFs
By 
Rebecca Trager2021-09-23T13:30:00
Data-crunching goes up against gut feeling as the chemistry community weighs in on their favourites for the world’s top chemistry prize
The world will find out who has won this year’s chemistry Nobel prize in less than two weeks, on this 120th year of the most prestigious award in science, and excitement is building once more. Analysts and online commentators are once again attempting to forecast who get the nod, with favourites including free-radical chemistry, click chemistry, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and vaccine technology.
Clarivate Analytics, which maintains the publication indexing platform Web of Science, has put forward British biochemist Barry Halliwell from the National University of Singapore for pioneering research in free-radical chemistry, Japanese researcher Mitsue Sawamoto for his discovery and development of metal-catalysed living radical polymerisation and Yale University’s William Jorgensen for his work on the computational chemistry of organic and biomolecular systems in solution.