Meet the five two-time Nobel laureates

The American Barry Sharpless, awarded this Wednesday (5) with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with two other scientists, is the fifth person to receive the prize twice.

He had already won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001.

The following is the list of the other four members of the select club of Nobel laureates on two occasions:

Marie Curie: Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911)

French-Polish Marie Curie, the first woman to receive a Nobel, was awarded twice. In 1903 she won the Nobel Prize in Physics, alongside her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. In 1911 she received the Chemistry Prize.

The former was attributed to his discovery of radioactivity, polonium and radium, and the latter to his ongoing research into radioactivity.

Marie Curie is the only woman to have won two Nobel Prizes.

Linus Pauling: Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962)

The American Linus Pauling received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for having established the fundamental principles of protein architecture.

A peace activist with his wife during the Cold War, Pauling opposed nuclear testing. In three studies he demonstrated the danger of radioactivity and established the link between cancer and radiation exposure.

His campaign against nuclear tests contributed to their going underground. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.

John Bardeen: Physics (1956, 1972)

The American John Bardeen received his first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956, along with two colleagues, Walter Brattain and William Shokley, for the invention of the transistor.

The transistor revolutionized the field of electronics, with smaller and cheaper radios, calculators and computers, among other objects.

He received the second Nobel Prize, also in Physics, in 1972, for his participation in the development of the theory of superconductivity.

Frederick Sanger: Chemistry (1958, 1980)

The British Frederick Sanger received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1958 for his work on the structure of proteins, in particular insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.

The invention of a new sequencing method won a second Nobel Prize in 1980 (this time shared with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert). The “Sanger method”, adopted across the planet, made it possible to sequence the first human genome, which began in 1992 and was completed in 2001.

Two organizations have received the Nobel Peace Prize on several occasions: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1917, 1944 and 1963, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1954 and 1981.