The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1978 was awarded to Peter Mitchell "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory".
 

Mitchell's research has been carried out within an area of biochemistry often referred to in recent years as 'bioenergetics', which is the study of those chemical processes responsible for the energy supply of living cells. this concept of biological power transmission by protonmotive force (or 'proticity', as Mitchell has recently began to call it in an analogy with electricity) has already been shown to be applicable to other energy-requiring cellular processes. Mitchell's discoveries are therefore both interesting and potentially valuable, not only for the understanding of biological energy-transfer systems but also in relation to the technology of energy conversion.