Search

The article announces the winners of the 2004 Nobel prizes in physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry. In recognition of more than a decade of pioneering exploration of the sense of smell, two Americans received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The researchers, Richard Axel of Columbia University and Linda Buck of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, will share the nearly $1.4 million prize. The award largely honors the pair's close collaboration on a paper published in Cell in 1991 and their continuing independent efforts. Before the paper appeared, scientists knew little about the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the olfactory system, which transmits information on odorant molecules from the nose to the brain. Three physicists who developed a theory to explain the strong interaction that holds together atomic nuclei--one of the four basic forces in the universe-have won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. David J. Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara, H. David Politzer of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will share the $1.36 million prize. This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to three scientists for their discovery in the early 1980s of how cells mark proteins for destruction. The key turned out to be the molecular tag called ubiquitin. Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and Irwin Rose of the University of California, Irvine will share the prize.