Nobel Chemistry Prize honors electron microscopy
US-, UK- and Switzerland-based researchers Joachim Frank, Richard Henderson and Jacques Dubochet will share $1.1 million reward
Three researchers based in the US, UK and Switzerland were announced Wednesday as the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developments in electron microscopy.
The 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize will be shared by Jacques Dubochet of the University of Lausanne, Joachim Frank at New York’s Columbia University and Richard Henderson of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain.
The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences said Wednesday their method, called cryo-electron microscopy, allows researchers to “freeze biomolecules” mid-movement and visualize processes they have never previously seen.”
The development, it said, “is decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals.”
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry rewards researchers for major advances in studying the infinitesimal bits of material that are the building blocks of life.
Recent prizes have gone to scientists who developed molecular “machines” — molecules with controllable motions — and who mapped how cells repair damaged DNA, leading to improved cancer treatments.
The chemistry award was the third Nobel announced this week.
The medicine prize went to three Americans studying circadian rhythms: Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young.
Rosbash, 74, came to Brandeis University in 1974 and is the Peter Gruber Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and professor of biology at the Jewish-founded nonsectarian school.
His parents were immigrants who fled Germany in 1938. His father was a cantor at Temple Ohabei Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Brookline, Massachusetts, not far from the Brandeis campus.
The physics prize went to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for detecting gravitational waves.
Weiss was born to a German-Jewish father and his family fled Germany due to the Nazis’ rise to power.
Barish’s parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland.
The literature winner will be named Thursday and the peace prize will be announced Friday.
