The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1923 was awarded to Fritz Pregl "for his invention of the method of micro-analysis of organic substances".
 

One of the pioneers in the microanalysis of chemical elements was the Austrian Nobel Prize winner Fritz Pregl. Microanalysis is the chemical identification and quantitative analysis of very small amounts of matter. The work, which this year has been rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry by the Royal Academy of Sciences, who awards it to Professor Fritz Pregl of Graz for his invention of the micro-analysis of organic substances, is not a new discovery either. It is in the main a revision and an improvement of older methods. The improvement consists of the fact that Pregl converted previously used methods for quantitative analysis of relatively large quantities of substances to micro-analytical methods. Pregl succeeded, by introducing new apparatus and techniques, in reducing to the almost incredibly small amount of 5-3 milligrams and even less the quantity normally required for the quantitative determination of various elements in organic compounds.
 

When in 1910 Pregl started the investigations which he continued with great skill and success during the following years, he first set himself the task of revising the method for carbon-hydrogen determination, the focal problem of elemental analysis. Pregl's micro-analysis can be equally well applied in all fields of organic chemistry.