Caltech’s latest Nobel laureate is only 5th women ever to win chemistry prize

PASADENA — Half of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went Wednesday to a Caltech scientist who becomes only the fifth woman to win the prize.

She is Frances H. Arnold, a scientist and engineer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In announcing the award in Stockholm, Sweden, the Royal Swedish Academy said that this year’s prize “awards a revolution based on evolution” and goes to scientists who “applied the principles of Darwin in the test tube.”

Arnold was recognized for performing the first-ever “directed evolution” of enzymes, which are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. Enzymes produced through directed evolution are used to manufacture everything from sustainable biofuels to pharmaceuticals.

The other half of the prize went jointly to George P. Smith, a professor at the University of Missouri, and Sir Gregory P. Winter of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

The methods developed by the laureates are reported to have been put to work to create new enzymes and antibodies used in promoting a greener chemicals industry, mitigating disease and saving lives.