Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Fritz Pregl received recognition after being awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, this chemist received this coveted honor "for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances." Through an ingenious apparatus and methodology, he made it possible, from research in the 1910s, to precisely determine the composition of much smaller amounts of an element than had been possible before. This was especially important in physiological researching. Since 1917 he received 10 nominations for the Nobel Prize from a host of Nobel Prize Recipients, members of the Nobel Committee, and university professors. His Nobel Prize was the first to be awarded for accomplishments in the field of analytical chemistry. Born into a family of Slovenian ancestry on his father's side, he spoke Slovenian and German. At the time of his birth, Slovenia was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. His father was a banker, who died when Pregl was a child. After finishing school on the local level with gold medals, he attended the University of Graz studying medicine and receiving his M.D. in 1894. Before he graduated, he became an assistant lecturer for physiology and histology, becoming the full-time lecturer in 1903. To broaden his scientific knowledge, he spent 1904 in Germany, where he studied with several scientists who had received Nobel Prizes, such as Emil Fischer. In 1910 he was appointed professor of medical chemistry at the University of Innsbruck, returning to the University of Graz in 1913 as professor of medicine. The research that he accomplished at the University of Innsbruck led to his pathway to the Nobel nomination. During this time, he acquired knowledge of all branches of chemistry. Spending most of his career at the University of Graz as a professor, he did take the time to practice medicine, specializing in ophthalmology. He was the second ophthalmologist to receive the Nobel Prize with Allvar Gullstrand being the first. In 1917, he published "The Quantitative Organic Microanalysis," which underwent numerous and frequently revised editions, being translated from German into several languages. Historians describe his life as "dry." He never married. Outside of the laboratory, he was a soccer player, mountain climber, an avid cyclist, an outstanding glassblower, and had a passion for automobile racing. After purchasing a Steyr, he had an auto accident with serious injuries, which caused him not to be able to return to work, thus his health declined and dying the next year at the age of 61. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 1914. The chemistry department of the University of Graz was named in 1950 the Institute of Medical Chemistry and Pregl Laboratory. Awards given in his honor: Annually since 2007, the Pregl Award for Exceptional Achievement in Chemistry has been awarded by the Slovenia Institute of Chemistry, and since 1931 the Fritz Pregl Prize has been awarded by the Austrian Academy of Science with monetary funding provided by Pregl. A couple of streets in Austria and a plaza in Graz were named in his honor. In Slovenia, there is a memorial with a bronze bust of him in the city park in Ljubljana, and the residence of his birthplace has been marked with yet another bust. In December of 1973, the Austrian postal service issued in his honor a stamp displaying his image.