American duo wins Nobel for Medicine
Americans Richard Axel and Linda B Buck have won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work in studying odorant receptors.
Americans Richard Axel and Linda B Buck have won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine for their work in studying odorant receptors and the organisation of the olfactory system in human beings.
The medicine prize includes a check for USD 1.3 million, but it is the aura of prestige a Nobel Prize confers that candidates crave most.
Axe, 58, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University in New York, shared the prize with Buck, 57, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washingon.
According to the foundation, the pair were honoured because their work "discovered a large gene family, comprised of some 1,000 different gene (3 per cent of our genes) that give rise to an equivalent number of olfactory receptor types."
Those receptors help people determine what they are smelling, the foundation said.
There are no set guidelines for deciding who wins. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards hat bear his name, simply said the winner "shall have made the most important discovery within th domain of physiology or medicine."
The Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, which selects the medicine prize winner, invites nominations from previous recipients, professors of medicine and other professionals worldwide before whittling down its choices in the fall.
Last year's prize winners were Briton Sir Peter Mansfield and American Paul C Lauterbur for discoveries that led to the development of MRI, which is used by doctors to get a detailed look into their patients' bodies.
The award for medicine opens a week of Nobel Prizes that culminates on October 11 with the economics prize. The peace prize, the only one bestowed in Oslo, Norway, will be announced on October 8. The physics award will be announced tomorrow and the chemistry prize will be announced on Wednesday in the Swedish capital.
A date for the Nobel Prize in literature has not yet been set by the Swedish Academy, but is likely to fall on Thursday, Nobel watchers said. The awards always are presented on December 10.
