At the press conference held at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the winners of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine were announced.
Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel were awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work in the field of optogenetics, a biotechnology and neuroscience method that allows controlling the activities of living cells using light, and for their discoveries regarding light-controlled ion channels.
According to the statement made on Nobel's website, Hegemann and Nagel discovered the protein called "channelrhodopsin", which is stated to have "unique properties".
Researchers found that this protein makes each cell into which it is placed sensitive to light.
In the experiment where Deisseroth inserted the gene for this protein into nerve cells taken from rats, he succeeded in obtaining signals from the nerves and making them work in the living mouse brain.
Who are Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel?
Deisseroth was born in the United States in 1971 and is a professor of Bioengineering and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Born in Germany in 1954, Hegemann is known for his work in biochemistry and biophysics.
After graduating with a degree in chemistry, Hegemann received his PhD in Biochemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich in 1994. He then did a short-term postdoctoral research study at the Department of Physics at Syracuse University.
Born in Germany in 1953, Georg Nagel studied biology at the University of Konstanz.
Nagel, who met Hegemann at an institute conducting research on biophysics in Germany, worked at Yale and Rockefeller universities in the USA after his doctorate.
To date, the Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to 117 people, and no one has received the award for the second time yet. The youngest person to be awarded the medical award was 31 years old, and the oldest person was 87 years old.
About the Nobel Prizes
The awards given by the Nobel Foundation, which was established on June 29, 1900, after the death of the Swedish Alfred Nobel, to those who served humanity, are considered the most prestigious awards in the world.
Nobel Prizes are given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to the individuals or organizations deemed to be the most successful in 5 branches: physics, chemistry, literature, peace and medicine.
In addition, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for the first time in 1969, when the Swedish Central Bank decided in 1968 to award an award in economics in memory of Alfred Nobel.
Nobel Prizes are delivered to their owners at a ceremony held every year on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
On the other hand, there have been several years when the prizes were not awarded since their inception in 1901. Most of the cases where awards were not given, 49 times in total, occurred during the First and Second World Wars. The award ceremonies could not be held in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
