2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Harald zur Hausen, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 6 October 2008.

The citation

Half of the prize goes to Harald zur Hausen "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer". Half of the prize goes jointly to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier "for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus".

The laureates

Harald zur Hausen was born in 1936 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and is affiliated with German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was born in 1947 in Paris, France, and is affiliated with Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, Virology Department, Institut Pasteur, Paris. Luc Montagnier was born in 1932 in Chabris, France, and is affiliated with World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, Paris.

Why it matters

Zur Hausen showed that a virus causes cervical cancer, leading to vaccines against it, while Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier identified HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in 1983.

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.