October 15, 1986

Announcement by the Royal Swedish Academy

The Royal Swedish Academy announced the 1986 Nobel Prize as having been awarded:

"...for the development of a new field of research in chemistry—reaction dynamics—[which] has provided a much more detailed understanding of how chemical reactions take place."

Among the three joint recipients John C. Polanyi is cited for developing "the method of infrared chemiluminescence, in which the extremely weak infrared emission from a newly formed molecule is measured and analysed. He has used this method to elucidate the detailed energy disposal during chemical reactions."