This year’s Nobel for Chemistry was awarded to Gerhard Ertl, a German scientist, for his studies in surface chemistry.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award in Stockholm on Wednesday.

Ertl’s studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces could play a key role for the chemical industry, the Academy said.

The semiconductor industry is yet another area that depends on knowledge of surface chemistry.

Surface chemistry helps improve the understanding of processes ranging from "why iron rusts, how fuel cells function" to how "the catalysts in our cars work"

The surface chemistry plays a key part in the production of artificial fertilizers, and it could help find a remedy for global warming as it explains the destruction of ozone layer.

Ertl was born in 1936 and he is professor emeritus at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin.

Ertl is the second German scientist to win a Nobel Prize this year, as yesterday, Peter Gruenberger of Germany shared the physics prize with Albert Fert of France.

"I hope the Nobel Prize will not change my life too much. But all the other laureates tell me that it does," Ertl said in an interview.