2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 7 October 2019.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

William G. Kaelin Jr was born in 1957 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, Boston, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe was born in 1954 in Lancashire, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with the University of Oxford, Oxford and the Francis Crick Institute, London. Gregg L. Semenza was born in 1956 in New York, the United States, and is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Why it matters

The three scientists discovered how cells sense and respond to changing levels of oxygen, work that could lead to new treatments for anaemia and cancer. Ratcliffe works at the University of Oxford and the Francis Crick Institute.

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.