The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, of the Netherlands, "for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions".

As of 2022[update], only eight women had won the prize: Marie Curie (1911), her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie (1935), Dorothy Hodgkin (1964), Ada Yonath (2009), Frances Arnold (2018), Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna (2020), and Carolyn R. Bertozzi (2022).

[3] Nobel stipulated in his last will and testament that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, and literature.

[4][5] Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895.

[citation needed] The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved.

In 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II.

[10][13][14] According to Nobel's will, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences were to award the Prize in Chemistry.

[14] The committee and institution serving as the selection board for the prize typically announce the names of the laureates in October.

The prize is then awarded at formal ceremonies held annually on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

[citation needed] The Nobel Laureates in chemistry are selected by a committee that consists of five members elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

A Chemistry Nobel Prize laureate earns a gold medal, a diploma bearing a citation, and a sum of money.

[16][17] The reverse of the physics and chemistry medals depict the Goddess of Nature in the form of Isis as she emerges from clouds holding a cornucopia.

[27] In the 30 years leading up to 2012, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded ten times for work classified as biochemistry or molecular biology, and once to a materials scientist.

[28] In 2020, Ioannidis et al. reported that half of the Nobel Prizes for science awarded between 1995 and 2017 were clustered in just a few disciplines within their broader fields.