Names of purported Nobel chemistry prize winners inadvertently released

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus, and Alexei I. Ekimov for their discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. The names of the winners were accidentally revealed in an email from the academy. Quantum dots are tiny nanoparticles with properties determined by their size.

Swedish media say the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences may have announced the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry prematurely.

The more than century-old prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($997,959).

The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse for “his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the Swedish Academy.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was established by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other explosives.

Claudia Goldin has been awarded the 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for her work on women's labour market outcomes. The economics prize has historically had few female winners, with only two since its inception in 1969. The economics prize is the last of the Nobel prizes to be awarded this season, with laureates in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, and peace already announced.

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on quantum dots — tiny particles that can release very bright coloured light and are used in electronics and medical imaging.