The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (Swedish: Nobelpriset i fysiologi eller medicin) administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life, science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will. Nobel was personally interested in experimental physiology and wanted to establish a prize for progress through scientific discoveries in laboratories. The Nobel prize is presented to the recipient(s) at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death, along with a diploma and a certificate for the monetary award. The front side of the medal provides the same profile of Alfred Nobel as depicted on the medals for Physics, Chemistry, and Literature; its reverse side is unique to this medal.

As of 2011, 102 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded to 199 men, and 10 women. The first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1901 to the German physiologist Emil Adolf von Behring, for his work on serum therapy and the development of a vaccine against diphtheria. The first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Gerty Cori, received it in 1947 for her role in elucidating the metabolism of glucose, important in many aspects of medicine, including treatment of diabetes. In 2011, the prize was awarded to Bruce Beutler of the United States and Jules A. Hoffmann of France "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity" and to Ralph M. Steinman of Canada "for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity."^[1] Some awards have been controversial. This includes one to António Egas Moniz in 1949 for the prefrontal leucotomy, bestowed despite protests from the medical establishment. Other controversies resulted from disagreements over who was included in the award. The 1952 prize to Selman Waksman was litigated in court, and half the patent rights awarded to his co-discoverer Albert Schatz who was not recognized by the prize. The 1962 prize awarded to James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their work on DNA structure and properties did not acknowledge the contributing work from others, such as Oswald Avery and Rosalind Franklin who had died by the time of the nomination. Since the Nobel Prize rules forbid nominations of the deceased, longevity is an asset, one prize being awarded as long as 50 years after the discovery. Also forbidden is awarding any one prize to more than three recipients, and since in the last half century there has been an increasing tendency for scientists to work as teams, this rule has resulted in controversial exclusions.

Background[link]

Nobel was interested in experimental physiology and set up his own laboratories.

Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden into a family of engineers.^[2] He was a chemist, engineer and inventor who amassed a fortune during his lifetime, most of it from his 355 inventions of which dynamite is the most famous.^[3] He was interested in experimental physiology and set up his own labs in France and Italy to conduct experiments in blood transfusions. Keeping abreast of scientific findings, he was generous in his donations to Ivan Pavlov's laboratory in Russia, and was optimistic about the progress resulting from scientific discoveries made in laboratories.^[4]

In 1888, Nobel was surprised to read his own obituary, titled ‘The merchant of death is dead’, in a French newspaper. As it happened, it was Nobel's brother Ludvig who had died, but Nobel, unhappy with the content of the obituary and concerned that his legacy would reflect poorly on him, was inspired to change his will.^[5] In his last will, Nobel requested that his money be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology or medicine, and literature.^[6] Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died at the age of 63.^[7] Because his will was contested, it was not approved by the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) until April 26, 1897.^[8]

After Nobel's death, the Nobel Foundation was set up to manage the assets of the bequest.^[9] In 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by Swedish King Oscar II.^[10][11] According to Nobel's will, the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, a medical school and research center, is responsible for the Prize in Physiology or Medicine.^[12] Today the prize is commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Medicine.^[13]

Nomination and selection[link]

It was important to Nobel that the prize be awarded for a "discovery" and that it was of "greatest benefit on mankind".^[14] Per the provisions of the will, only select persons are eligible to nominate individuals for the award. These include members of academies around the world, professors of medicine in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland, as well as professors of selected universities and research institutions in other lands. Past Nobel laureates may also nominate.^[15] Until 1977, all professors of Karolinska Institutet together decided on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. That year, changes in Swedish law forced the Institute to make any documents pertaining to the Nobel Prize public and it was considered necessary to establish a legally independent body for the Prize work. Therefore, the Nobel Assembly was constituted, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet. It elects the Nobel Committee with 5 members who evaluate the nominees, the Secretary who is in charge of the organization, and each year 10 adjunct members to assist in the evaluation of candidates. In 1968, a provision was added that no more than three persons may share a Nobel prize.^[16] The 2011 winners were announced October 3, 2011.^[1]

True to its mandate, the Committee has selected researchers working in the basic sciences over those who have made applied contributions. Harvey Cushing, a pioneering American neurosurgeon who identified Cushing's syndrome never was awarded the prize, nor was Sigmund Freud, as his psychoanalysis lacks hypotheses that can be tested experimentally.^[17] The public expected Jonas Salk or Albert Sabin to win the prize for their development of the polio vaccines, but instead the award went to John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins whose basic discovery that the polio virus could reproduce in monkey cells in laboratory preparations was a fundamental finding that led to the elimination of the disease of polio.^[18]

Through the 1930s, there were frequent prize winners in classical Physiology, but after that the field began dissolving into specialties. The last classical physiology winners were John Eccles, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley in 1963 for their findings regarding "unitary electrical events in the central and peripheral nervous system."^[19]

Prizes[link]

A Medicine or Physiology Nobel Prize laureate, earns a gold medal, a diploma bearing a citation, and a sum of money.^[20] These are awarded at the Nobel Banquet.

Medals[link]

The Nobel Prize medals, minted by Myntverket^[21] in Sweden are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation. Each medal features an image of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse (front side of the medal). The Nobel Prize medals for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature have identical obverses, showing the image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death (1833–1896). Before 1980, the medals were made of 23K gold; since then the medals are of 18K green gold, plated with 23K gold.^[22]

The medal awarded by the Karolinska Institute displays an image of "the Genius of Medicine holding an open book in her lap, collecting the water pouring out from a rock in order to quench a sick girl's thirst." The medal is inscribed with words taken from Virgil's Aeneid and reads: Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes, which translates to "inventions enhance life which is beautified through art."^[23]

Diplomas[link]

Nobel laureates receive a Diploma directly from the King of Sweden. Each Diploma is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureate that receives it. In the case of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, that is the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute. Well-known artists and calligraphers from Sweden are commissioned to create it.^[24] The Diploma contains a picture and text which states the name of the laureate and a citation as to why they received the prize.^[24]

Award money[link]

The amount of prize money fluctuates depending on how much money the Nobel Foundation can award that year, and is awarded in Swedish kronor (SEK).^[25] The first award in 1901 was for 150,782 kronor (7,872,648 kronor in 2009 value).^[25] In 2009, the prize money totaled 10,000,000 kronor.^[25] If there are two winners in a particular category, the award grant is divided equally between the recipients. If there are three, the awarding committee has the option of dividing the grant equally, or awarding one-half to one recipient and one-quarter to each of the others.^[26]

Ceremony and banquet[link]

The awards are bestowed at a gala ceremony followed by a banquet.^[27] The Nobel Banquet is a extravagant affair with the menu, planned months ahead of time, kept secret until the day of the event. The Nobel Foundation chooses the menu after tasting and testing selections submitted by selected chefs of international repute. Currently it is a three course dinner, although it was originally six courses when it began in 1901. Every Nobel Prize winner is allowed to bring up to 16 guests, and Sweden's royal family is always there. Typically the Prime Minister and other members of the government attend as well as representatives of the Nobel family.^[28]

Laureates[link]

Nikolaas Tinbergen (left), Konrad Lorenz (right) won (with Karl von Frisch) for their discoveries concerning animal behavior.^[29]

The first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1901 to the German physiologist Emil Adolf von Behring.^[30] Behring's discovery of serum therapy in the development of the diphtheria and tetanus vaccines put "in the hands of the physician a victorious weapon against illness and deaths".^[31][32] In 1902, the award went to Ronald Ross for his work on malaria, "by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it".^[33] He identified the mosquito as the transmitter of malaria, and worked tirelessly on measures to prevent malaria worldwide.^[34][35] The 1903 prize was awarded to Niels Ryberg Finsen, the first Danish winner, "in recognition of his contribution to the treatment of diseases, especially lupus vulgaris, with concentrated light radiation, whereby he has opened a new avenue for medical science".^[36][37] He died within a year after receiving the prize at the age of 43.^[38] Pavlov, whose work Nobel admired and supported, won the prize in 1904 for his work on the physiology of digestion.^[39]

Subsequently, those selecting the recipients have exercised wide latitude in determining what falls under the umbrella of Physiology or Medicine. The awarding of the prize in 1973 to Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch for their observations of animal behavioral patterns could be considered a prize in the behavioral sciences rather than medicine or physiology.^[13] Tinbergen expressed surprise in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at "the unconventional decision of the Nobel Foundation to award this year’s prize ‘for Physiology or Medicine’ to three men who had until recently been regarded as ‘mere animal watchers’".^[40]

Laureates have won the Nobel Prize in a wide range of fields that relate to physiology or medicine. As of 2010^[update], eight Prizes have been awarded for contributions in the field of signal transduction through G proteins and second messengers. 13 have been awarded for contributions in the field of neurobiology^[41] and 13 have been awarded for contributions in Intermediary metabolism.^[42] The 100 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded to 195 individuals through 2009.^[43][44] Ten women have won the prize: Gerty Cori (1947), Rosalyn Yalow (1977), Barbara McClintock (1983), Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986), Gertrude B. Elion (1988), Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard (1995), Linda B. Buck (2004), Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (2008), Elizabeth H. Blackburn (2009) and Carol W. Greider (2009).^[45] Only one woman, Barbara McClintock, has won an unshared prize in this category, for the discovery of genetic transposition.^[43][46] Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies won the prize in 2007 for the discovery of a gene targeting procedure (a type of genetic recombination) for introducing homologous recombination in mice, employing embryonic stem cells through the development of the knockout mouse.^[47][48] There have been 37 times when the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to a single individual, 31 times when it was shared by two, and 33 times there were three winners (the maximum allowed).

In 2009, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak of the United States for discovering the process by which chromosomes are protected by telomeres (regions of repetitive DNA at the ends of chromosomes) and the enzyme telomerase; they shared the prize of 10,000,000 SEK (slightly more than €1 million, or US$1.4 million).^[49] Rita Levi-Montalcini, an Italian neurologist, who together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of Nerve growth factor (NGF), is the oldest living Nobel Laureate, being over 100 as of June 2010^[update].^[44]

In 1947, Gerty Cori was the first woman to be awarded the Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Time factor and death[link]

Because of the length of time that may pass before the significance of a discovery becomes apparent, some prizes are awarded many years after the initial discovery. Barbara McClintock made her discoveries in 1944, before the structure of the DNA molecule was known; she was not awarded the prize until 1983. Similarly, in 1916 Peyton Rous discovered the role of tumor viruses in chickens, but was not awarded the prize until 50 years later, in 1966.^[50] Nobel laurate Carol Greider's research leading to the prize was conducted over 20 years before. She noted that the passage of time is an advantage in the medical sciences, as it may take many years for the significance of a discovery to become apparent.^[51] The 2009 award in medicine was the first in the Nobel Prize's history that more than one woman has been the recipient of the Nobel Prize in a single year.^[52] It is also the first time two women have been awarded the Physiology or Medicine prize.^[53]

In 2011, Canadian immunologist Ralph M. Steinman was awarded the prize; however, unknown to the committee, he had died three days before the announcement. The committee decided that since the prize was awarded "in good faith," it would be allowed to stand.

Controversial inclusions and exclusions[link]

Some of the awards have been controversial. Who was deserving of the 1923 prize for the discovery of insulin as a central hormone for controlling diabetes (awarded only a year after its discovery)^[54][55] has been heatedly debated. It was shared between Frederick Banting and John Macleod; this infuriated Banting who regarded Macleod's involvement as minimal. Macleod was the department head at the University of Toronto but otherwise was not directly involved in the findings. Banting thought his laboratory partner Charles Best, who had shared in the laboratory work of discovery, should have shared the prize with him as well. In fairness, he decided to give half of his prize money to Best. Macleod on his part felt the biochemist James Collip, who joined the laboratory team later, deserved to be included in the award and shared his prize money with him.^[54] Moreover, Nicolae Paulescu, a Romanian professor of physiology at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, was the first to isolate insulin, in 1916, which he called at that time, pancrein. By the time Banting also isolated insulin after reading and citing Paulescu's published work ("Research on the Role of the Pancreas in Food Assimilation",^[56][57]) in the paper that brought him the Nobel,^[58] Paulescu already held a patent for his discovery (April 10, 1922, patent no. 6254 (8322) "Pancreina şi procedeul fabricaţiei ei"/"Pancrein and the process of making it", from the Romanian Ministry of Industry and Trade).^[59][60][61]

Scandal and controversy resulted from the 2008 award to Harald zur Hausen for the discovery of HPV, and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for discovering HIV.

In 1949, despite protests from the medical establishment, the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz received the Physiology or Medicine Prize for his development of the prefrontal leucotomy, which he promoted by declaring the procedure's success just 10 days postoperative. Due largely to the publicity surrounding the award, it was prescribed without regard for modern medical ethics. Favorable results were reported by such publications as The New York Times. It is estimated that around 40,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States before the procedure's popularity faded.^[62] Joseph Kennedy, the father of John Kennedy, subjected his daughter, Rosemary, to the procedure which incapacitated her to the degree that she needed to be institutionalized for the rest of her life.^[63][64]

The 1952 prize, awarded solely to Selman Waksman for his discovery of streptomycin, omitted the recognition some felt due to his co-discoverer Albert Schatz.^[65][66] There was litigation brought by Schatz against Waksman over the details and credit of the streptomycin discovery; Schatz was awarded a substantial settlement, and, together with Waksman, Schatz was to be officially recognized as a co-discoverer of streptomycin as far as patent rights. However, he is not recognized as a Nobel Prize winner.^[65]

The 1962 Prize awarded to James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins—for their work on DNA structure and properties—did not recognize contributing work from others, such as Alec Stokes and Herbert Wilson. In addition, Erwin Chargaff, Oswald Avery and Rosalind Franklin (whose key DNA x-ray crystallography work was the most detailed yet least acknowledged among the three)^[67] contributed directly to the ability of Watson and Crick to solve the structure of the DNA molecule—but Avery died in 1955, and Franklin in 1958 and posthumous nominations for the Nobel Prize are not permitted. However, recently unsealed files of the Nobel Prize nominations reveal that no one ever nominated Franklin for the prize when she was alive.^[68] Wilkins' only contribution was to show Rosa Franklin's key x-ray photos to Watson.^[69] As a result of Watson's misrepresentations of Franklin and her role in the discovery of the double helix in his controversial book The Double Helix, Franklin has come to be portrayed as a classic victim of sexism in science.^[70][71] Chargaff, for his part, was not quiet about his exclusion from the prize, bitterly writing to other scientists about his disillusionment regarding the field of molecular biology.^[69]

The 2008 award went to Harald zur Hausen in recognition of his discovery of the human papillomavirus (HPV) causing cervical cancer, and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for discovering the Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).^[72] Whether Robert Gallo or Luc Montagnier deserved more credit for the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS has been a matter of considerable controversy. As it was, Gallo was left out and not awarded a prize.^[73][74] Additionally, there was scandal when it was learned that Harald zur Hausen was being investigated for having a financial interest in vaccines for the cervical cancer HPV can cause. AstraZeneca, which has a stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines therefore can gain financially from the prize, had agreed to sponsor Nobel Media and Nobel Web. According to Times Online, two senior figures in the selection process that chose zur Hausen also had strong links with AstraZeneca.^[75]

Limits on number of awardees[link]

The provision that restricts the maximum number of nominees to three for any one prize, introduced in 1968, has caused considerable controversy.^[16][76] From the 1950s onward, there has been an increasing trend to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to more than one person. There were 59 people who received the prize in the first 50 years of the last century, while 113 individuals received it between 1951 and 2000. This increase could be attributed to the rise of the international scientific community after World War II, resulting in more persons being responsible for the discovery, and nominated for, a particular prize. Also, current biomedical research is more often carried out by teams rather than by scientists working alone, making it unlikely that any one scientist, or even a few, is primarily responsible for a discovery;^[18] this has meant that a prize nomination that would have to include more than three contributors is automatically excluded from consideration.^[50] Also, deserving contributors may not be nominated at all because the restriction results in a cut off point of three nominees per prize, leading to controversial exclusions.^[14]

Years without awards[link]

There have been nine years in which the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was not awarded (1915–1918, 1921, 1925, 1940–1942). Most of these occurred during either World War I (1914–1918) or World War II (1939–1945).^[44] In 1939, Adolf Hitler's Third Reich forbade Gerhard Domagk from accepting his prize.^[77] He was later able to receive the diploma and medal but not the money.^[44][78]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

• All Nobel Laureates in Medicine – Index webpage on the official site of the Nobel Foundation.
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• Official site of the Nobel Foundation.
• Graphics: National Medicine Nobel Prize shares 1901-2009 by citizenship at the time of the award and by country of birth. From J. Schmidhuber (2010), Evolution of National Nobel Prize Shares in the 20th Century at arXiv:1009.2634v1

James E. Rothman is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale University Medical School. He has received many honors, including the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research both in 2002 and the King Faisal Award. Dr. Rothman received his B.A. at Yale University and his Ph.D. at Harvard.

Dr. Rothman began his career in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University in 1978. He was at Princeton University from 1988 to 1991, before coming to New York to found the Department of Cellular Biochemistry and Biophysics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he also served as vice chairman of Sloan-Kettering Institute. Dr. Rothman is widely credited as a key force in the rise to pre-eminence of science at Sloan-Kettering. In 2003 he left Sloan-Kettering to become a professor of physiology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and head of Columbia's Center for Chemical Biology. Dr. Rothman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Rothman’s award-winning research details how vesicles—tiny sac-like structures that transport hormones, growth factors, and other molecules within cells—know how to reach their correct destination and where and when to release their contents. This cellular trafficking underlies many critical physiological functions, including the propagation of the cell itself in division, communication between nerve cells in the brain, secretion of insulin and other hormones in the body, and nutrient uptake. Defects in this process lead to a wide variety of conditions, including diabetes and infectious diseases such as botulism.

In 1995, Dr. Rothman joined the Amersham PLC scientific advisory board. When Amersham was acquired by GE Healthcare in 2003, Dr. Rothman was appointed as the Chief Science Advisor to GE Healthcare.

Dr. Rothman will participate in the development of Yale's new West Campus.

External links[link]

• Interview with James Rothman by Lasker Laureate and Nobelist Günter Blobel of Rockefeller University
• Yale press release September 12, 2008
• Yale press release June 5, 2008

Elizabeth Blackburn
Born	(1948-11-26) November 26, 1948 (age 63) Hobart, Tasmania
Residence	US
Citizenship	Australian and American
Fields	Molecular biology
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley University of California, San Francisco Yale University the Salk Institute
Alma mater	University of Melbourne, Darwin College, Cambridge
Doctoral advisor	Frederick Sanger
Doctoral students	include Carol W. Greider
Notable awards	Harvey Prize {1999}, Heineken Prize, Lasker Award, Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science (2008) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2009)

Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, AC, FRS (born 26 November 1948 in Hobart, Tasmania) is an Australian-born American biological researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome. Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere. Blackburn recalls: "Carol had done this experiment, and we sat down, just in the lab, and I remember sort of standing there, and she had this -- we call it a bum. It's an autoradiogram, because there was trace amounts of radioactivity that were used to develop an image of the separated DNA products of what turned out to be the telomerase enzyme reaction. I remember looking at it and just thinking, ‘Ah! This could be very big. This looks just right.’ It had a pattern to it. There was a regularity to it. There was something that was not just sort of garbage there, and that was really kind of coming through, even though we look back at it now, we'd say, technically, there was this, that and the other, but it was a pattern shining through, and it just had this sort of sense, ‘Ah! There's something real here.’ "^[1]For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. She also worked in medical ethics, and was controversially dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics.

Work in molecular biology[link]

In 1981, Blackburn joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Molecular Biology. In 1990, she moved across the San Francisco Bay to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she served as the Department Chairwoman from 1993 to 1999. Blackburn is currently the Morris Herzstein Professor of Biology and Physiology at UCSF, and a non-resident fellow of the Salk Institute. She is the president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research. In recent years Blackburn and her colleagues have been investigating the effect of stress on telomerase and telomeres^[2] with particular emphasis on mindfulness meditation. ^[3][4] She is also one of several biologists (and one of two Nobel Prize laureates) in the 1995 science documentary Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times.

Bioethics[link]

Blackburn was appointed a member of the President's Council on Bioethics in 2001. She supported human embryonic cell research, in opposition to the Bush Administration. Her Council terms were terminated by White House directive on 27 February 2004.^[5] This was followed by expressions of outrage over her removal by many scientists, who maintained that she was fired because of political opposition to her advice.^[6]

"There is a growing sense that scientific research—which, after all, is defined by the quest for truth—is being manipulated for political ends," wrote Blackburn. "There is evidence that such manipulation is being achieved through the stacking of the membership of advisory bodies and through the delay and misrepresentation of their reports."^[7][8]

Blackburn serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Genetics Policy Institute.

Personal[link]

Blackburn is married to John W. Sedat, and has a son, Benjamin.^[9]

Awards and honors[link]

• Eli Lilly Research Award for Microbiology and Immunology (1988)
• National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology (1990)
• Honorary Doctorate of Science from Yale University (1991)
• Harvey Society Lecturer at the Harvey Society in New York (1990)
• Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991)^[10]
• Fellow of Royal Society of London (1992)
• Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology (1993)
• Australia Prize (1998)
• Gairdner Foundation International Award (1998)
• Harvey Prize (1999)
• Keio Medical Science Prize (1999)
• California Scientist of the Year in (1999)
• California Hall of Fame (2011)
• American Association for Cancer Research - G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award (2000)
• American Cancer Society Medal of Honor (2000)
• Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (2000)
• Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award (2000)
• AACR-Pezcoller Foundation International Award for Cancer Research (2001)
• General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan Award (2001)
• E.B.Wilson Award of the American Society for Cell Biology (2001)
• Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Foundation Medical Research Award (2003)
• Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine (2004)
• Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science of The Franklin Institute (2005)
• Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2006) (shared with Carol W. Greider and Jack Szostak)
• Genetics Prize from the Peter Gruber Foundation (2006)
• Honorary Doctorate of Science from Harvard University (2006)^[11]
• Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences from the Wiley Foundation (shared with Carol W. Greider)(2006)
• Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (2007)*Recipient of the UCSF Women's Faculty Association Award
• Honorary Doctorate of Science from Princeton University (2007)
• Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (2007) (shared with Carol W. Greider and Joseph G. Gall)
• L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science (2008)
• Mike Hogg Award (2009)
• Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (2009) (shared with Carol W. Greider)
• Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (2009) (shared with Carol W. Greider and Jack Szostak)^[12][12][13]
• Companion of the Order of Australia (Australia Day Honours, 2010), for eminent service to science as a leader in the field of biomedical research, particularly through the discovery of telomerase and its role in the development of cancer and ageing of cells and through contributions as an international adviser in Bioethics.^[14]

• Elected:
  • President of the American Association for Cancer Research for the year 2010^[15]
  • President of the American Society for Cell Biology for the year 1998

• • Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1993)
  • Member of the Institute of Medicine (2000)
  • Board member of the Genetics Society of America (2000–2002)

In 2007, Blackburn was listed among Time Magazine's The TIME 100—The People Who Shape Our World.^[16]

You can watch a video documentary of Blackburn's work with Telomerase titled 'Decoding Immortality'

See also[link]

• History of RNA biology
• List of biologists
• List of female Nobel laureates
• List of RNA biologists

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Elizabeth Blackburn

Erwin Neher
Erwin Neher (2007)
Born	(1944-03-20)March 20, 1944 Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria, Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	biophysics
Institutions	University of Göttingen University of Wisconsin–Madison Yale University Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
Alma mater	Technical University of Munich University of Wisconsin-Madison
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1991 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 1987

Erwin Neher (born 20 March 1944 in Landsberg am Lech, Upper Bavaria) is a German biophysicist.

Erwin Neher studied physics at the Technical University of Munich from 1963 to 1966. In 1966, He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the US. He spent a year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and earned a Masters Degree in Biophysics.

In 1986, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Bert Sakmann. In 1987, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Along with Bert Sakmann, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991 for "their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells"^[1]. Neher and Sakmann were the first to record the currents of single ion channels through their development of the patch-clamp technique,^[2][3][4][5] a project Neher began as a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Charles F. Stevens at Yale. He is now a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and heads its Department for Membrane Biophysics. He is also a Professor at the University of Göttingen and a co-chair of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen.

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Neher's published works include the following:

• Elektronische Messtechnik in der Physiologie. Berlin, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1974.
• Single-channel recording / edited by Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher. New York : Plenum Press, c1983. ISBN 0-306-41419-8
• Single-channel recording / edited by Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher. 2nd ed. New York : Plenum Press, c1995. ISBN 0-306-44870-X

External links[link]

• Nobel autobiography
• Scientific genealogy
• Freeview video 'An Interview with Erwin Neher' by the Vega Science Trust
• The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

This article about a German physicist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

George Wald (November 18, 1906 – April 12, 1997) was an American scientist who is best known for his work with pigments in the retina. He won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit.

Research[link]

Wald plotted the absorbance of rod pigment (black curve), then later the absorbance of cone pigments (red, green, and blue curves)

As a postdoctoral researcher, Wald discovered that vitamin A was a component of the retina. His further experiments showed that when the pigment rhodopsin was exposed to light, it yielded the protein opsin and a compound containing vitamin A. This suggested that vitamin A was essential in retinal function.

In the 1950s, Wald and his colleagues used chemical methods to extract pigments from the retina. Then, using a spectrophotometer, they were able to measure the light absorbance of the pigments. Since the absorbance of light by retina pigments corresponds to the wavelengths that best activate photoreceptor cells, this experiment showed the wavelengths that the eye could best detect. However, since rod cells make up most of the retina, what Wald and his colleagues were specifically measuring was the absorbance of rhodopsin, the main photopigment in rods. Later, with a technique called microspectrophotometry, he was able to measure the absorbance directly from cells, rather than from an extract of the pigments. This allowed Wald to determine the absorbance of pigments in the cone cells (Goldstein, 2001).

Biography[link]

Wald was born in New York City to Isaac Wald and Ernestine Rosenmann, Jewish immigrant parents. He was a member of the first graduating class of the Brooklyn Technical High School in New York in 1922. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from New York University in 1927 and his PhD in zoology from Columbia University in 1932. After graduating, he received a travel grant from the US National Research Council. Wald used this grant to work in Germany with Otto Heinrich Warburg where he identified vitamin A in the retina. Wald then went on to work in Zurich, Switzerland with the discoverer of vitamin A, Paul Karrer. Wald then worked briefly with Otto Fritz Meyerhof in Heidelberg, Germany, but left Europe for the University of Chicago in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power and life in Europe became more dangerous for Jews. In 1934, Wald went to Harvard University where he became an instructor, then a professor. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1950 and in 1967 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries in vision. In 1966 he was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal by the OSA. He was married twice: in 1931 to Frances Kingsley and in 1958 to the biochemist Ruth Hubbard. He had two sons with Kingsley—Michael and David; he and Hubbard had a son—the award-winning musicologist and musician Elijah Wald—and a daughter, Deborah, a prominent family law attorney.

Wald spoke out on many political and social issues and his fame as a Nobel laureate brought national and international attention to his views. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race.

Speaking at MIT in 1969 Wald bemoaned that "Our government has become preoccupied with death, with the business of killing and being killed."^[1]

In 1980, Wald served as part of Ramsey Clark's delegation to Iran during the Iran hostage crisis.

With a small number of other Nobel laureates, he was invited in 1986 to fly to Moscow to advise Mikhail Gorbachev on a number of environmental questions. While there, he questioned Gorbachev about the arrest, detention and exile to Gorki of Yelena Bonner and her husband, fellow Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov (Peace, 1975). Wald reported that Gorbachev said he knew nothing about it. Bonner and Sakharov were released shortly thereafter, in December, 1986.

Wald died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

See also[link]

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates
• Retinal

References[link]

External links[link]

• Nobel Prize Biography
• John E. Dowling, "George Wald, 1906–1997: A Biographical Memoir" in Biographical Memoirs, Washington, D.C.: The National Academy Press (National Academy of Sciences), Volume 78, 298:317.
• A remembrance by his son Elijah
• Papers of George Wald : an inventory

Two of George Wald's speeches can be read on-line:

• A Generation in Search of a Future
• The Origin of Death