The Nobel Assembly awarded the 2026 medicine prize to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries that turned light-sensitive proteins into a way to control nerve cells.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet said on 5 October 2026 that it had awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.
Deisseroth is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University. Hegemann is at Humboldt University of Berlin and Nagel at the University of Wuerzburg. The prize amount is 12 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally, the Assembly said.
Hegemann and Nagel identified channelrhodopsin in a single-celled alga and showed that cells carrying the protein became sensitive to light. Deisseroth later introduced the channelrhodopsin gene into nerve cells, turning the protein into a switch that laboratories use to study how circuits shape memory, feeling and behaviour.
The Assembly described the work as the foundation of a method now used in laboratories worldwide. Physics and other 2026 Nobel announcements were still scheduled after the medicine prize.
The official citation is for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. Press contacts listed by the Assembly were Pernilla Witte and Thomas Perlmann.