2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Leland Hartwell, Tim Hunt and Sir Paul Nurse. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 8 October 2001.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Leland Hartwell was born in 1939 in Los Angeles, the United States, and is affiliated with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle. Tim Hunt was born in 1943 in Neston, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London. Sir Paul Nurse was born in 1949 in Norwich, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London.

Why it matters

The three scientists identified the key molecules that control how cells divide. Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse both worked in Britain, at what is now Cancer Research UK, and their findings are important for understanding how cancer cells grow out of control.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.