The Nobel Assembly awarded the 2026 medicine prize to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for 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 on Monday to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
The prize citation says the work makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behaviours in the living brain. Hegemann and Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin in a single-celled alga. Deisseroth turned that protein into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells. The laureates share 12 million Swedish kronor. Deisseroth is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University. Hegemann is at Humboldt University of Berlin. Nagel is at the University of Würzburg.
AP reported the ages as 54, 71 and 73. It said Hegemann explored how a green alga swims toward light, and that he and Nagel found a protein that opens a channel and creates an electrical impulse when hit by blue light. Putting that protein into other cells makes them light-sensitive. The Nobel Assembly said the method is now used in laboratories around the world.
Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly, told Reuters that all three laureates were surprised and delighted and described one another as friends. Anna Wedell, professor of molecular medicine at Karolinska, said mouse models of dementia, epilepsy and addiction can show which cells are active and where to look in humans.
The medicine prize opens Nobel week. Physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economic-sciences awards follow in the coming days.
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- Perlmann said the three laureates were surprised and delighted and called one another friends