Both Hahn and Meitner had been nominated for the chemistry and the physics Nobel Prizes many times even before the discovery of nuclear fission for their work on radioactive isotopes and protactinium. Several more nominations followed for the discovery of fission between 1940 and 1943. Nobel Prize nominations were vetted by committees of five, one for each award. Although both Hahn and Meitner received nominations for physics, radioactivity and radioactive elements had traditionally been seen as the domain of chemistry, and so the Nobel Committee for Chemistry evaluated the nominations in 1944.
The committee received reports from Theodor Svedberg in 1941 and  in 1942. These chemists were impressed by Hahns work, but felt that the experimental work of Meitner and Frisch was not extraordinary. They did not understand why the physics community regarded their work as seminal. As for Strassmann, although his name was on the papers, there was a long-standing policy of conferring awards on the most senior scientist in a collaboration. In 1944 the Nobel Committee for Chemistry voted to recommend that Hahn alone be given the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1944. However, Germans had been forbidden to accept Nobel Prizes after the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to Carl von Ossietzky in 1936. The committees recommendation was rejected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which decided to defer the award for one year.
The war was over when the academy reconsidered the award in September 1945. The Nobel Committee for Chemistry had now become more cautious, as it was apparent that much research had been undertaken by the Manhattan Project in the United States in secret, and it suggested deferring the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for another year. The academy was swayed by Göran Liljestrand, who argued that it was important for the academy to assert its independence from the Allies of World War II, and award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to a German, as it had done after World War I when it had awarded it to Fritz Haber. Hahn therefore became the sole recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei".
Meitner wrote in a letter to her friend Birgit Broomé-Aminoff on 20 November 1945:
In 1946, the Nobel Committee for Physics considered nominations for Meitner and Frisch received from Max von Laue, Niels Bohr, Oskar Klein, Egil Hylleraas and James Franck. Reports were written for the committee by Erik Hulthén, who held the chair of experimental physics at Stockholm University, in 1945 and 1946. Hulthén argued that theoretical physics should be considered award-worthy only if it inspired great experiments. The role of Meitner and Frisch in being the first to understand and explain fission was not understood. There may also have been personal factors: the chairman of the committee, Manne Siegbahn, disliked Meitner, and had a professional rivalry with Klein. Meitner and Frisch would continue to be nominated regularly for many years, but would never be awarded a Nobel Prize.