Swedish media outlets on Wednesday published what they reported were the seemingly leaked names of this year's Nobel chemistry prize recipients, hours before the laureates were to be announced.
Nobel leaks are rare, with the various prize-awarding academies going to great lengths to keep the winners' names under wraps until the announcements.
Sweden's paper of reference, Dagens Nyheter, and public broadcasters SVT and Swedish Radio reported receiving a press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that named three US-based chemists.
"We can't comment on this until we know what has happened, we have to look into it," the Academy's press spokeswoman Eva Nevelius told AFP.
According to the reports, the laureates are Moungi Bawendi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louis Brus from Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov who works at Nanocrystals Technology.
They reportedly won the prize "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots".
Quantum dots are widely used in areas such as modern LED television screens, solar panels and in medicine where they among other things can help guide surgeons in removing tumours.
The Academy was due to make its announcement at 11:45am (0945 GMT), minutes after holding a meeting and a vote to pick the winner.
Heiner Linke, an expert on the Academy's Nobel Chemistry Committee, expressed surprise to Dagens Nyheter.
"Right now I'm just trying to understand what has happened. We haven't made a decision yet, so if a press release has gone out then it's definitely a mistake," Linke said.
The list of nominations for each prize is also kept secret for 50 years.
But leaks have happened in the past.
In 2010, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet revealed the name of the medicine prize winner -- Britain's Robert Edwards, who pioneered IVF technology -- several hours before the announcement.
The trio mentioned in the reports on Wednesday were not among the top picks in the pre-prize speculation.
Among the fields that had been cited in scientific circles as Nobel-worthy were synthetic biology, DNA sequencing and the development of new compounds.
Some of the names were US-based James J. Collins, Michael Elowitz and Stanislas Leibler, whose work on "synthetic gene circuits" launched the field of "synthetic biology", according to analytics group Clarivate which monitors potential science laureates.
The field combines engineering principles with biotechnology to modify or create new organisms.
However, Lars Brostrom, science editor at Swedish Radio, said the field could be seen ascontroversial, raising "ethical questions about where to draw the line in creating life".
Other Nobel-worthy research
Also among Clarivate's top candidates were Indian-born Shankar Balasubramanian and Briton David Klenerman, for co-inventing "the next-generation DNA sequencing methodology that has revolutionised biological research".
Japan's Kazunori Kataoka, along with Russian-American Vladimir P. Torchilin and American Karen L. Wooley are also believed to be strong candidates for the "development of innovative drug and gene targeting and delivery methods".
Last year, the honour went to Dane Morten Meldal and Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry -- making Sharpless one of only five people, not counting organisations, to have won two Nobel prizes.
Brostrom said he would like to see the prize go to American-Jordanian Omar Yaghi.
"He was one of the pioneers who showed early on that a kind of customised porous material, known as MOFs (Metal–organic framework) was not just a fantasy, but something that could be made sustainable and useful," he told AFP.
"Today, there are commercial products made of this type of material that can, among other things, absorb and decontaminate toxins, act as a catalyst or even absorb water from desert air," he added.
Yaghi's name has previously been floated alongside Japan's Susumu Kitagawa and Makoto Fujita -- also considered pioneers of the technology.
Stanford University chemical engineering professor Zhenan Bao has also been tipped for the prize in the past.
The Chinese-American and her team have invented an "artificial electronic skin" by developing materials for stretchable circuits and flexible batteries.
Another skin-related field that could be Nobel-worthy is tissue engineering, thanks to the American trio Cato Laurencin, Kristi Anseth and Robert Langer.
The Chemistry Prize will be followed by the highly watched literature and peace prizes, to be announced on Thursday and Friday respectively, and the economics prize which closes out the 2023 Nobel season on Monday.
