Credit: A. SCHMIDT/AFP/GETTY

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Gerhard Ertl (pictured) on 10 October, which just happened to be his seventy-first birthday. Ertl developed ways of applying spectroscopic techniques to tease out the mechanisms of reactions at surfaces, such as the Haber?Bosch synthesis of ammonia. He retired as director of the Max Planck Society's Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin in 2004. The prize committee said his work ?provided the scientific basis of modern surface chemistry?.

Chemists welcomed the award of this year's prize to a 'proper chemist', as several recent Nobels have gone to research that might in many eyes be seen more as biology. Some, though, have expressed surprise that the award was given to Ertl alone, and not shared with fellow surface chemist Gabor Somorjai of the University of California, Berkeley. When asked about this, Somorjai replied: ?It's a very well deserved prize. Professor Ertl is a very good scientist, a good colleague and a good friend.?