Book excerpt: Mentioned as the second prize area in his will, Chemistry was the most important science for Alfred Nobel's own work. The development of Nobel's inventions as well as the industrial processes he employed were based upon chemical knowledge. This volume is a collection of the Nobel lectures delivered by the prizewinners, together with their biographies and the presentation speeches for the period 2006-2010. Each Nobel lecture is based on the work for which the laureate was awarded the prize.List of prizewinners and their award citations:(2006) Roger D Kornberg — for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription;(2007) Gerhard Ertl — for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces;(2008) Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y Tsien — for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP;(2009) Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A Steitz and Ada E Yonath — for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome;(2010) Richard F Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki — for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.