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.
Thomas Sully the noted Yankton Sioux ethnologist and writer; and the great-great-grandfather of Vine Deloria, Jr., Standing Rock Sioux scholar and author of "" (1969), an American Indian civil-rights manifesto. Sully was a great-uncle of Thomas Sully (1855–1939), the New Orleans-based architect. The portrait painter and Civil War artist Charles Henry Lanneau of South Carolina was his student. Thomas Sully Thomas Sully (June 19, 1783 – November 5, 1872) was an American portrait painter, who was born in Britain but lived most of his life in Philadelphia. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence, and his subjects included Thomas Jefferson, John