Devanjana Mukherjee, Khabri Media
The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.
Pic: Social Media
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women from around the world for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and for work in peace. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded 114 times to 227 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2023.
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This year the winner(s) in the Medicine or Physiology category have been awarded to Hungary’s Katalin Kariko and US’s Drew Weissman for their pathbreaking work in developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.
Who are Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman
Katalin Kariko was born in 1955 in Szolnok in Hungary. She received her bachelor’s degree in biology in 1978 and her doctorate in biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged. She pursued postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged until 1985. She then moved to the US, where she conducted postdoctoral research at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the University of Health Science, Bethesda.
Pic: Social Media
Ms Kariko was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and remained there until 2013. She then became vice president and later senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. Since 2021, Ms Kariko has been a Professor at Szeged University and an Adjunct Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts in the US. He did his BA in biochemistry and MA in Enzymology from Brandeis University in 1981. Mr Weissman received his MD in immunology and PhD in microbiology degrees from Boston University in 1987. He then did his clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School and postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health.
Pic: Social Media
Mr Weissman is also the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations. He established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.
Brief History
Between 1901 and 2022, the Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel were awarded 615 times to 989 people and organizations. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, and based on the fortune of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor and entrepreneur. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a cash award.
Who is Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel was an inventor, entrepreneur, scientist, and businessman who also wrote poetry and drama. His varied interests are reflected in the prize he established and which he laid the foundation for in 1895 when he wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the prize.
Alfred Nobel signed his last will in Paris on November 27, 1895. He specified that the bulk of his fortune should be divided into five parts and to be used for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
Nobel Prize Winners from India
India has seen a total of 9 Nobel Prize laureates from 1913 to 2023. The first was awarded to Rabindra Nath Tagore in 1913 for his exceptionally moving, original, and exquisite poetry in Literature and the latest or most recent was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee in 2019 for his experimental approach to alleviating global poverty in the field of Economics. The rest of the names of Nobel Laureates from India have been mentioned below.
- CV Raman Physics 1930
- Har Govind Khurana Medicine 1968
- Mother Teresa Peace 1979
- Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar Physics 1983
- Amartya Sen Economics 1998
- Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Chemistry 2009
- Kailash Satyarthi Peace 2014
The entire team of Khabri Media congratulates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman on winning the Nobel Prize 2023 for their exceptional work in the field of Medicine.
