The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1902 was awarded to Emil Fischer "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses".
 

Fischer showed how piecing together intricate chemical details about substances in Nature that are essential for life can reveal vital information about their functions and uncover unexpected connections.
 

Fischer transformed our knowledge of carbohydrates, chemicals such as sugars and starch, which provide a major source of energy for animals. Natural fruit sugars might vary considerably in their physical characteristics, but Fisher discovered that many of them in fact share a strikingly similar chemical makeup to the common sugar, glucose. Applying the theories of three-dimensional chemistry developed by the first Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Jacobus van 't Hoff, Fischer deduced that these sugars differ through the various ways in which their carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms are arranged in space. Through his refined methods of analysis and synthesis, Fischer also identified the chemical relationships between a range of biologically important chemicals, including caffeine, the stimulant in coffee, and uric acid, the cause of the disease gout.