It is Nobel time again (October 6) and for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2010 prediction we can just rerun the contestants from 2008 and 2009, check their health and scrap the ones who have already won (although there is no law preventing someone winning twice).

That leaves us with Charles Lieber (Nanotechnology), George M. Whitesides (Nanotech, supramolecular chemistry), James Fraser Stoddart (supramolecular chemistry), Krzysztof Matyjaszewski (Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization) , Michaël Grätzel (dye-sensitized solar cell) and Benjamin List (organocatalysis). For Jacqueline Barton Bernd Giese & Gary Schuster also see DNA electron transfer in 30 seconds.

If the h-index is any measure the number one on the 2010 list as published on the Royal Society website is again Whitesides followed by the theoretical chemist Martin Karplus (involved for example in molecular dynamics of biomolecules) and physical chemist Ad Bax involved in protein NMR. Also on the list organic physical chemist Paul von Ragué Schleyer (computational chemistry) and a familiar sight on this blog , see for example the New Ruling On Stability blog and the protobranching blog.

Summing up in terms of clusters the potential winners are Barton/Giese/schuster (DNA electron transfer), Lieber/Whitesides/Stoddard (nanotech advance) and Karplus/Bax (biomolecular structure elucidation). More 2010 predictions in the bloggosphere: by chembark and by Everyday Scientist.

Update 23-09: Thomson predictions are in

Also see: the 2011 predictions

Also see: Meanwhile_in_the_Whitesides_lab