2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 6 October 2004.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Aaron Ciechanover was born in 1947 in Haifa, British Protectorate of Palestine (now Israel), and is affiliated with Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. Avram Hershko was born in 1937 in Karcag, Hungary, and is affiliated with Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. Irwin Rose was born in 1926 in Brooklyn, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of California, Irvine.

Why it matters

Their work showed how cells mark unwanted proteins with a small molecule called ubiquitin so that they can be broken down. The process is vital to cell division and DNA repair, and faults in it are linked to disease.

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.