The Nobel Assembly awarded the 2026 medicine prize to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries on light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. They share 12 million Swedish kronor.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. The assembly said the prize recognises a method that can show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behaviour in the living brain.
Deisseroth is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University. Hegemann is at Humboldt University of Berlin and Nagel at the University of Würzburg. The prize sum is 12 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally. Reuters reported the laureates' ages as 54, 71 and 73.
The assembly said Hegemann and Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin in a single-celled alga, and Deisseroth turned that protein into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells. AP reported that the work began with research on how green algae swim toward light, and that illuminating the protein with blue light opens a channel and creates an electrical impulse. Putting the protein into other cells makes those cells light-sensitive.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly, said the method makes it possible to switch individual nerve cells in a living brain on or off. Physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics prizes are due later in the week, with the peace prize scheduled for Friday, Reuters reported.
Laboratories already use optogenetics to map circuits linked to behaviour and disease. The assembly described the discoveries as the foundation of a new era in neuroscience.
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- The Nobel Assembly called the work the foundation of a new era in neuroscience
- Perlmann said the method can switch individual nerve cells on or off