2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 10 October 2012.

The citation

The citation reads: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Robert J. Lefkowitz was born in 1943 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center, Durham. Brian Kobilka was born in 1955 in Little Falls, the United States, and is affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford.

Why it matters

G-protein-coupled receptors sit in the walls of cells and respond to hormones, light and smells. Around half of all medicines work by acting on them.

The prize

The prize is worth 8 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.