Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun win Nobel Prize in medicine for discovery of microRNA; Ruvkun is Jewish

Victor Ambros (left) and Gary Ruvkun, winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine. (Nobel Prize Outreach)
Victor Ambros (left) and Gary Ruvkun, winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine. (Nobel Prize Outreach)

The Nobel Prize in medicine is awarded to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.

The Nobel Assembly says that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”

Ambrose performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Ruvkun’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, says Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Committee.

Both men were awarded Israel’s Wolf Prize in 2014. Ruvkun, who is Jewish, won the Dan David Prize, headquartered at Tel Aviv University, in 2011. He is married to art history professor Natasha Staller.

Olle Kaempe, member of the Nobel Assembly, speaks to the media in front of a screen displaying a picture of this year’s laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun during the announcement of the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on October 7, 2024. (Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP)

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

The announcement launched this year’s Nobel prizes award season.

Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 14.

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