For their discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, United States scientists David Julius and Adam Patapoutian have won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday.
The Nobel jury remarked, “The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world.”
Furthermore, they added “In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.”
Julius and Patapoutian, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and a professor at Scripps Research in California respectively, will share reportedly the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor (around Rs 8.5 crore INR), said an NDTV report.
In the previous year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. Though the 2020 award was handed out as the pandemic raged, this is the first time that the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of COVID-19 pandemic.
At the end of January, nominations close each year, and at around that time last year the COVID-19 pandemic was still largely confined to China.
The Nobel season continues with the award for physics and chemiostry on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, followed by the much awaited prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize brings things to an end on Monday, October 11.