Israel’s Wolf Prize awarded to Canadian endocrinologist

A Canadian endocrinologist whose research has helped develop therapies for diabetes and obesity and three chemists whose work has advanced the understanding of RNA were announced Tuesday as winners of Israel’s prestigious Wolf Prize.

The University of Toronto’s Daniel Drucker received this year’s Wolf Prize in Medicine “for his research into intestinal hormones and their use in treating diabetes and other metabolic diseases,” the Wolf Foundation said.

The 2023 laureates were announced by the Wolf Foundation, a state-owned entity that issues the award to promote excellence in arts and sciences. Dozens of Wolf Prize Laureates have gone on to win Nobel prizes in the 45 years since its conception.

The other recipients of this year’s awards include Ingrid Daubechies of Duke University in mathematics; Chuan He of the University of Chicago, Hiroaki Suga of the University of Tokyo, and Jeffery W. Kelly of the Scripps Research Institute in chemistry; Martinus van Genuchten of Brazil’s Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in agriculture; and Fujiko Nakaya of Japan and Richard Long of the United Kingdom in art.

The awards were announced Tuesday in Jerusalem at a ceremony hosted by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog.

“Looking at the work of this year’s laureates, what is so striking to me is not only the faculties of human intellect they reflect, but the determination they express to alleviate human suffering and improve life on Earth,” he said.

An awards ceremony is scheduled in June.

Past recipients of the prize include astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, artist Marc Chagall, conductor Zubin Mehta and musician Stevie Wonder.