2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 7 October 2015.

The citation

The citation reads: "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Tomas Lindahl was born in 1938 in Stockholm, Sweden, and is affiliated with the Francis Crick Institute, Hertfordshire and Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire. Paul Modrich was born in 1946 in Raton, the United States, and is affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Durham and Duke University School of Medicine, Durham. Aziz Sancar was born in 1946 in Savur, Turkey, and is affiliated with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Why it matters

The three scientists showed how cells repair damaged DNA, which is essential to life and important for understanding cancer. Lindahl, born in Sweden, works at the Francis Crick Institute's Clare Hall Laboratory in Hertfordshire.

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.