According to Prelog's autobiography, his main interests were natural compounds, from adamantane and aialoids to rifamycins and boromycin.
In 1975 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to award one half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Vladimir Prelog for his research into the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions. At the time he worked in Switzerland.
That year, Professor John Warcup Cornforth from England was given the other half of the award for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
Prelog was born on 23 July 1906 in Sarajevo, and died in Zurich in 1998.
The urn with his ashes was transferred to Zagreb's main cemetery of Mirogoj in 2001.
Another Croat, Lavoslav Ruzicka, also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939.