Nobel Prize Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and Philipp Lenard's work on cathode rays. The Academy of Sciences selected Röntgen for the prize. In the last decades of the 19th century, many chemists had made significant contributions. Thus, with the Chemistry Prize, the Academy "was chiefly faced with merely deciding the order in which these scientists should be awarded the prize". The Academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for Jacobus van 't Hoff. Van 't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in chemical thermodynamics. The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature.
Sully Prudhomme (1874), permanently damaged his health. During his career, Prudhomme gradually shifted from the sentimental style of his first books towards a more personal style which unified the formality of the Parnassus school with his interest in philosophical and scientific subjects. The inspiration was clearly Lucretius's "De rerum natura", for the first book of which he made a verse translation. His philosophy was expressed in "La Justice" (1878) and "Le Bonheur" (1888). The extreme economy of means employed in these poems has, however, usually been judged as compromising their poetical quality without advancing their claims as works of philosophy. He was