2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 2 October 2017.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Jeffrey C. Hall was born in 1945 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of Maine, Maine. Michael Rosbash was born in 1944 in Kansas City, the United States, and is affiliated with Brandeis University, Waltham and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Michael W. Young was born in 1949 in Miami, the United States, and is affiliated with the Rockefeller University, New York.

Why it matters

Working with fruit flies, the three Americans uncovered the genes that control the body clock, which regulates sleep, hormones and body temperature.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 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.