The Nobel Assembly awarded the 2026 physiology or medicine prize to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries on light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Karl Deisseroth of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University, Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg. The citation is for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
The Assembly said Hegemann and Nagel identified channelrhodopsin in a single-celled alga, and that Deisseroth turned the protein into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells. The prize amount is 12 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally. Reuters reported the laureates’ ages as 54, 71 and 73 and put the sum at about $1.2 million.
Reuters said Nagel and Hegemann published in 2003 that the protein could be introduced into human cells to generate electrical impulses with light. Deisseroth showed the technique in rat nerve cells in 2005, and the method was named optogenetics in 2006. Secretary-General Thomas Perlmann said the method can switch individual nerve cells on or off in a living brain.
AAAS reported that optogenetics has been adapted to give a small number of blind people modest light sensitivity and is being tested in epilepsy and pain. Physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics prizes are still to come, with the peace prize due Friday, Reuters said.
The award is a shared US-German result announced in Stockholm, so it is filed as a world science story rather than assigned to a single country.