2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 5 October 2009.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Elizabeth H. Blackburn was born in 1948 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, and is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco. Carol W. Greider was born in 1961 in San Diego, the United States, and is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. Jack W. Szostak was born in 1952 in London, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Why it matters

Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes that protect them as cells divide. Their discovery has shed light on ageing and cancer.

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.