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The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to
Karl Deisseroth
Peter Hegemann
Georg Nagel
“for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”
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To understand how the brain forms memories, feelings and behaviours has long been a dream for researchers. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries leading to optogenetics, which makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain. This method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.
Press release
Popular information: A light-sensitive algal protein energised neuroscience
Scientific background: Optogenetics. Discovery of a neuronal switch
© The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Ill. Mattias Karlén
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”
Hegemann and Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin, a protein with unique properties. They found that regardless of which cell they put the protein in, those cells became light sensitive. Deisseroth introduced the gene for channelrhodopsin into nerve cells from rats. By illuminating the cells with blue light, he was able to trigger a nerve signal. Later, he made this light-controlled switch for nerve cells work in the brains of living mice.
This method for controlling nerve signals with light is now called optogenetics, and it has rapidly gained global impact.
Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach
Did you know that light could be used to trigger individual nerve cells?
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Ada Yonath died on 31 August 2026, aged 87. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.”
Hideki Shirakawa passed away on 24 August 2026 in Yokohama, Japan, aged 90. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2000 “for the discovery and development of conductive polymers.”
Rudolph Marcus passed away on 16 July 2026, aged 102. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1992 “for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems.”
Susumu Tonegawa died on 11 July 2026, aged 86. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1987 “for his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity.”
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