The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, awarded by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, goes to Victor Ambros And Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNAsmall RNA molecules that play a “fundamental role in gene regulation”.
“The groundbreaking discovery of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine laureates revealed a completely new genome regulation principle which has proven to be fundamental for all multicellular organisms, including humans”, underlines the jury. “We now know that the human genome encodes more than a thousand microARS, fundamental to understanding the development of organisms.”
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the name of the winner(s) this Tuesday – up to three for each category – in Chemistry and, the next day, the Physical. On Thursday, it will be the turn of one of the prizes that attracts the most attention, that of Literatureissued by the Swedish Academy.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee will award another prize among the most followed on Friday, that of Peacethe only one that is granted and issued outside of Sweden. The headquarters are in Oslo, at the express request of the founder of the awards, the Swedish magnate Alfred Nobel, Norway then being part of the Kingdom of Sweden.
The selection of winners will close on Monday 14 with the award ceremony in Economyestablished in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden, coinciding with the 300th anniversary of its creation. The selection process is the same in all categories: scientists, academics and university professors present the applications and the different Nobel committees establish several criteria to choose the winner(s), up to three per prize.
And they all have the same financial allocation, this year 11 million Swedish crowns (about 1.1 million dollars or 968,000 euros). Prizes can be void, which has happened on 49 occasions, but since 1974 they cannot be awarded posthumously, unless the winner dies between the time the prize was awarded and the award was given.
Two people voluntarily refused a prize: the French writer Jean Paul Sartre, for Literature, in 1964; and the Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, that of Peace, in 1973. There were four cases of forced rejection by their governments – The most famous, that of Boris Pasternak, whom the Soviet authorities forced not to accept in 1958, that of Literature.
The prizes are presented on December 10, coinciding with the anniversary of Nobel’s death, in a double ceremony at the Konserthus in Stockholm and at Oslo City Hall.
