Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to three scientists for microscopy of living molecules

Nobel in Chemistry is awarded
(Image credit: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)

On Wednesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry to three men, Jacques Dubochet, 75, Joachim Frank, 77, and Richard Henderson, 72, "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" — or as the Nobel committee said, creating a "cool microscope technology" that will revolutionize biochemistry by allowing people to see the inner workings of biomolecules at the atomic level.

See more

Henderson, a Scot who works at Cambridge, developed a way to examine living molecules under an electron microscope in 1990, and Frank, a German-born U.S. citizen at Columbia, made the technology widely applicable; Dubochet, a Swiss citizen at the University of Lausanne, added water to electron microscopy. Their technique was optimized in 2013.

See more

Thanks to their work, "we may soon have detailed images of life's complex machineries in atomic resolution," the Nobel committee said. Their cryo-electron microscopy technique "has moved biochemistry into a new era," giving scientists a new method that should prove "decisive for both the basic understanding of life's chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals," like a vaccine against the Zika virus.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.