2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 9 October 2000.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Arvid Carlsson was born in 1923 in Uppsala, Sweden, and is affiliated with Göteborg University, Gothenburg. Paul Greengard was born in 1925 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with the Rockefeller University, New York. Eric Kandel was born in 1929 in Vienna, Austria, and is affiliated with Columbia University, New York.

Why it matters

Their research showed how nerve cells pass signals to one another through chemical messengers such as dopamine. It helped explain Parkinson's disease and led to treatments for it, and Kandel's work showed how memories are formed.

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.