1901 van't Hoff receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chemical thermodynamics and osmotic pressure.

1909 Ostwald receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As early as 1890 he suggested that the electrical signals measured in living tissue could be caused by ion currents passing through the cell membrane.

1963 Eccles, Hodgkin and Huxley receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning ion mechanisms in nerve cell membranes.

1991 Neher and Sakmann awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells.

1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Boyer and Walker for explaining the function of the membrane protein that produces ATP, and to Skou for his discovery of the sodium-potassium pump.

2003 Agre and MacKinnon awarded this year's Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning channels in the cell membrane.