The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1939 was divided equally between Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt "for his work on sex hormones" and Leopold Ruzicka "for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes".
 

For centuries, philosophers, writers and musicians have all mused upon the differences between the sexes, but to scientists this can be largely explained by the actions of a variety of chemical messengers, or sex hormones, that influence the development of masculine or feminine characteristics. The discovery that pregnant women's urine contains unusually high quantities of female sex hormones provided Adolf Butenandt with the essential starting point for unlocking their chemical secrets. At around the same time another researcher Edward Doisy accomplished the same feat, but Butenandt also worked out the chemical structure of oestrone. At around the same time, Leopold Ruzicka had switched his attention from studying the structures of the active components of natural musk perfumes to studying their chemical relations.