The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1983 was awarded to Henry Taube "for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes".
 

Taube has today been awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for his studies of the mechanisms of electron transfer in metal complexes. Better than anyone else he has helped us understand how these electron transfers take place. It is particularly the structural preconditions governing electron transfers in metal complexes which he has studied. The electron transfer process as such is a separate major problem in theoretical chemistry and physics, where other scientists have contributed more than Taube. Taube has made major contributions throughout the chemistry of complexes. Thus he was the first to produce a complex between a three-valent metal ion, which was based on the ideas developed by Taube in his electron transfer studies.