In 1901, the very first Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to the Dutch chemist J.H. van ‘t Hoff. The site of the laboratory where he did his prize-winning work recently became National Chemical Heritage.

‘Former fellow countryman wins enormous sum of money’; that was more or less the tenor in the Dutch newspapers in 1901 when it was announced that Henry (J.H.) van ‘t Hoff had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As far as any attention was paid to it at all. An enormous contrast with the utter madness that surrounds the Nobel Prize now, but also not very strange, since it was the very first year that this prize was awarded. A new, still unknown prize.

‘There was more attention for the news about Alfred Nobel’s legacy in those days, because it was an unimaginably large sum,’ says biographer Rob van den Berg, who received his doctorate for his book Van ‘t Hoff. Een gedreven buitenstaander (Van ‘t Hoff. A driven outsider) on October 6 at Leiden University. But that the news of the prize was ignored even within the KNAW did surprise him. ‘Van ‘t Hoff had been appointed to the Academy in 1885, after earlier opposition, and had been a corresponding member since 1895, when he left for Berlin. But his Nobel Prize was not mentioned at all. I do find that very strange.’