3 scientists awarded nobel prize for Medicine: Three scientist have received the 2026 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and George Nagel has been jointly awarded for their discoveries of light-gated ion channels and their role in developing optogenetics. Their work has given scientists a powerful new way to study how the brain works.
The Nobel Assembly lauded their work and wrote on X that the ‘method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal brain’s mystery.’ The assembly said Deisseroth(54) is based at Stanford University in California, while Hegemann(71) is at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel(73) at the University of Wurzburg, also in Germany.
Optogenetics is a technique that uses light to control individual nerve cells in the brain. This method makes it possible to switch on or off the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute. The three nobel winners will share a prize money of Rs 12 million Swedish crowns($1.2 million).
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It started when Hegemann explored how a single-celled type of green algae can swim toward light. He and Nagel discovered a particular protein that, when illuminated by blue light, opens a channel to create an electrical impulse. Putting that protein into other cells makes them light-sensitive.
Deisseroth then worked with the gene that controls that protein to create a light-controlled switch for nerve cells in the brains of living mice.
