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The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2015

Photo: Princeton University

Angus Deaton

Prize share: 1/1

12 October 2015

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2015 to

Angus Deaton
Princeton University, NJ, USA

"for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare". 

Consumption, great and small

To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.

The work for which Deaton is now being honored revolves around three central questions:

How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods?Answering this question is not only necessary for explaining and forecasting actual consumption patterns, but also crucial in evaluating how policy reforms, like changes in consumption taxes, affect the welfare of different groups. In his early work around 1980, Deaton developed the Almost Ideal Demand System – a flexible, yet simple, way of estimating how the demand for each good depends on the prices of all goods and on individual incomes. His approach and its later modifications are now standard tools, both in academia and in practical policy evaluation.

How much of society's income is spent and how much is saved? To explain capital formation and the magnitudes of business cycles, it is necessary to understand the interplay between income and consumption over time. In a few papers around 1990, Deaton showed that the prevailing consumption theory could not explain the actual relationships if the starting point was aggregate income and consumption. Instead, one should sum up how individuals adapt their own consumption to their individual income, which fluctuates in a very different way to aggregate income. This research clearly demonstrated why the analysis of individual data is key to untangling the patterns we see in aggregate data, an approach that has since become widely adopted in modern macroeconomics.

How do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty? In his more recent research, Deaton highlights how reliable measures of individual household consumption levels can be used to discern mechanisms behind economic development. His research has uncovered important pitfalls when comparing the extent of poverty across time and place. It has also exemplified how the clever use of household data may shed light on such issues as the relationships between income and calorie intake, and the extent of gender discrimination within the family. Deaton's focus on household surveys has helped transform development economics from a theoretical field based on aggregate data to an empirical field based on detailed individual data.

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Angus Deaton, UK and US citizen. Born 1945 in Edinburgh, UK. Ph.D. 1974 from University of Cambridge, UK. Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Princeton University, NJ, USA, since 1983.

http://scholar.princeton.edu/deaton

The Prize amount: 8 million Swedish krona
Further information: http://kva.se and http://nobelprize.org
Contacts: Hans Reuterskiöld, Press Officer, +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, hans.reuterskiold@kva.se
Jakob Svensson, member of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, +46 8 16 30 60, +46 70 177 67 17, jakob.svensson@iies.su.se

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organisation whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.

Bacheli boy from chhattisgarh got IGNITE Award 2015

The Nobel Peace Prize 2015

     

National Dialogue Quartet

Prize share: 1/1

Oslo, 10 October 2015

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2015

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is to be awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011. The Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 when the democratization process was in danger of collapsing as a result of political assassinations and widespread social unrest. It established an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war. It was thus instrumental in enabling Tunisia, in the space of a few years, to establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental rights for the entire population, irrespective of gender, political conviction or religious belief.

The National Dialogue Quartet has comprised four key organizations in Tunisian civil society: the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT, Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail), the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA, Union Tunisienne de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Artisanat), the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH, La Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme), and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers (Ordre National des Avocats de Tunisie). These organizations represent different sectors and values in Tunisian society: working life and welfare, principles of the rule of law and human rights. On this basis, the Quartet exercised its role as a mediator and driving force to advance peaceful democratic development in Tunisia with great moral authority. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is awarded to this Quartet, not to the four individual organizations as such.

The Arab Spring originated in Tunisia in 2010-2011, but quickly spread to a number of countries in North Africa and the Middle East. In many of these countries, the struggle for democracy and fundamental rights has come to a standstill or suffered setbacks. Tunisia, however, has seen a democratic transition based on a vibrant civil society with demands for respect for basic human rights.

An essential factor for the culmination of the revolution in Tunisia in peaceful, democratic elections last autumn was the effort made by the Quartet to support the work of the constituent assembly and to secure approval of the constitutional process among the Tunisian population at large. The Quartet paved the way for a peaceful dialogue between the citizens, the political parties and the authorities and helped to find consensus-based solutions to a wide range of challenges across political and religious divides. The broad-based national dialogue that the Quartet succeeded in establishing countered the spread of violence in Tunisia and its function is therefore comparable to that of the peace congresses to which Alfred Nobel refers in his will.

The course that events have taken in Tunisia since the fall of the authoritarian Ben Ali regime in January 2011 is unique and remarkable for several reasons. Firstly, it shows that Islamist and secular political movements can work together to achieve significant results in the country's best interests. The example of Tunisia thus underscores the value of dialogue and a sense of national belonging in a region marked by conflict. Secondly, the transition in Tunisia shows that civil society institutions and organizations can play a crucial role in a country’s democratization, and that such a process, even under difficult circumstances, can lead to free elections and the peaceful transfer of power. The National Dialogue Quartet must be given much of the credit for this achievement and for ensuring that the benefits of the Jasmine Revolution have not been lost.

Tunisia faces significant political, economic and security challenges. The Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes that this year's prize will contribute towards safeguarding democracy in Tunisia and be an inspiration to all those who seek to promote peace and democracy in the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the world. More than anything, the prize is intended as an encouragement to the Tunisian people, who despite major challenges have laid the groundwork for a national fraternity which the Committee hopes will serve as an example to be followed by other countries.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015

Ill. N. Elmehed. © Nobel Media AB 2015.

Svetlana Alexievich

Prize share: 1/1 

8 October 2015

 The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015

Svetlana Alexievich

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2015 is awarded to the Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich

"for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015

Photo: Cancer Research UK

Tomas Lindahl

Prize share: 1/3

Photo: K. Wolf/AP Images for HHMI

Paul Modrich

Prize share: 1/3

Photo: M. Englund, UNC-School of Medicine

Aziz Sancar

Prize share: 1/3

7 October 2015

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2015 to

Tomas Lindahl

Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, UK

Paul Modrich
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

and

Aziz Sancar
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

“for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" 

The cells’ toolbox for DNA repair

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information. Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments.

Each day our DNA is damaged by UV radiation, free radicals and other carcinogenic substances, but even without such external attacks, a DNA molecule is inherently unstable. Thousands of spontaneous changes to a cell’s genome occur on a daily basis. Furthermore, defects can also arise when DNA is copied during cell division, a process that occurs several million times every day in the human body.

The reason our genetic material does not disintegrate into complete chemical chaos is that a host of molecular systems continuously monitor and repair DNA. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 awards three pioneering scientists who have mapped how several of these repair systems function at a detailed molecular level.

In the early 1970s, scientists believed that DNA was an extremely stable molecule, but Tomas Lindahl demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible. This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery, base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA.

Aziz Sancar has mapped nucleotide excision repair, the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. People born with defects in this repair system will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight. The cell also utilises nucleotide excision repair to correct defects caused by mutagenic substances, among other things.

Paul Modrich has demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism, mismatch repair, reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a thousandfold. Congenital defects in mismatch repair are known, for example, to cause a hereditary variant of colon cancer.

The Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2015 have provided fundamental insights into how cells function, knowledge that can be used, for instance, in the development of new cancer treatments.

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Tomas Lindahl, Swedish citizen. Born 1938 in Stockholm, Sweden. Ph.D. 1967 from Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Professor of Medical and Physiological Chemistry at University of Gothenburg 1978–82. Emeritus group leader at Francis Crick Institute and Emeritus director of Cancer Research UK at Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, UK.
http://crick.ac.uk/research/a-z-researchers/emeritus-scientists/tomas-lindahl/

Paul Modrich, U.S. citizen. Born 1946. Ph.D. 1973 from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA.
http://www.biochem.duke.edu/paul-l-modrich-primary

Aziz Sancar, U.S. and Turkish citizen. Born 1946 in Savur, Turkey. Ph.D. 1977 from University of Texas, Dallas, TX, USA. Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
http://www.med.unc.edu/biochem/people/faculty/primary/asancar

Prize amount: 8 million Swedish krona, to be shared equally between the laureates.

Further information: http://kva.se and http://nobelprize.org

Contacts: Hans Reuterskiöld, Press Officer, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, hans.reuterskiold@kva.se Claes Gustafsson, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, +46 31 786 38 26, +46 70 858 95 21, claes.gustafsson@medkem.gu.se 

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, founded in 1739, is an independent organisation whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015

Photo © Takaaki Kajita

Takaaki Kajita

Prize share: 1/2

Photo: K. MacFarlane. Queen's University /SNOLAB

Arthur B. McDonald

Prize share: 1/2

6 October 2015

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2015 to

Takaaki Kajita
Super-Kamiokande Collaboration
University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

and

Arthur B. McDonald
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration
Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

“for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass”

Metamorphosis in the particle world

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 recognises Takaaki Kajita in Japan and Arthur B. McDonald in Canada, for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.

Around the turn of the millennium, Takaaki Kajita presented the discovery that neutrinos from the atmosphere switch between two identities on their way to the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.

Meanwhile, the research group in Canada led by
Arthur B. McDonald could demonstrate that the neutrinos from the Sun were not disappearing on their way to Earth. Instead they were captured with a different identity when arriving to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

A neutrino puzzle that physicists had wrestled with for decades had been resolved. Compared to theoretical calculations of the number of neutrinos, up to two thirds of the neutrinos were missing in measurements performed on Earth. Now, the two experiments discovered that the neutrinos had changed identities.

The discovery led to the far-reaching conclusion that neutrinos, which for a long time were considered massless, must have some mass, however small.

For particle physics this was a historic discovery. Its Standard Model of the innermost workings of matter had been incredibly successful, having resisted all experimental challenges for more than twenty years. However, as it requires neutrinos to be massless, the new observations had clearly showed that the Standard Model cannot be the complete theory of the fundamental constituents of the universe.

The discovery rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics have yielded crucial insights into the all but hidden world of neutrinos. After photons, the particles of light, neutrinos are the most numerous in the entire cosmos. The Earth is constantly bombarded by them.

Many neutrinos are created in reactions between cosmic radiation and the Earth’s atmosphere. Others are produced in nuclear reactions inside the Sun. Thousands of billions of neutrinos are streaming through our bodies each second. Hardly anything can stop them passing; neutrinos are nature’s most elusive elementary particles.

Now the experiments continue and intense activity is underway worldwide in order to capture neutrinos and examine their properties. New discoveries about their deepest secrets are expected to change our current understanding of the history, structure and future fate of the universe.

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 Takaaki Kajita, Japanese citizen. Born 1959 in Higashimatsuyama, Japan. Ph.D. 1986 from University of Tokyo, Japan. Director of Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and Professor at University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan.

www.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/about/greeting_eng.html

Arthur B. McDonald, Canadian citizen. Born 1943 in Sydney, Canada. Ph.D. 1969 from Californa Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.
www.queensu.ca/physics/arthur-mcdonald

Prize amount: SEK 8 million, to be shared equally between the Laureates.

Press contact: Hans Reuterskiöld, Press Officer, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, +46 70 673 96 50, hans.reuterskiold@kva.se
Experts: Olga Botner, member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, +46 18 471 38 76, +46 73 390 86 50, olga.botner@physics.uu.se
Lars Bergström, Secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physics, +46 8 553 787 25, lbe@fysik.su.se

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Nobel Prize® är is a registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation.

This year marks the 275th anniversary of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Academy was founded in 1739 and is an independent organization whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy takes special responsibility for the natural sciences and mathematics, but endeavours to promote the exchange of ideas between various disciplines.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015

Ill. N. Elmehed. © Nobel Media AB 2015.

William C. Campbell

Prize share: 1/4

Ill. N. Elmehed. © Nobel Media AB 2015.

Satoshi Ōmura

Prize share: 1/4

Ill. N. Elmehed. © Nobel Media AB 2015.

Youyou Tu

Prize share: 1/2

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award

the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

with one half jointly to

William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmurafor their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites

and the other half to

Youyou Tu
for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria

Diseases caused by parasites have plagued humankind for millennia and constitute a major global health problem. In particular, parasitic diseases affect the world's poorest populations and represent a huge barrier to improving human health and wellbeing. This year's Nobel Laureates have developed therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases.

William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura discovered a new drug, Avermectin, the derivatives of which have radically lowered the incidence of River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, as well as showing efficacy against an expanding number of other parasitic diseases. Youyou Tu discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from Malaria.

These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually. The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.

Figure 1: The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awards discoveries regarding novel therapies for some of the most devastating parasitic diseases: River Blindness, Lymphatic Filariasis (Elephantiasis) and Malaria. The distribution of these diseases is quite similar and is collectively shown in blue on the world map.

Parasites cause devastating diseases

We live in a biologically complex world, which is populated not only by humans and other large animals, but also by a plethora of other organisms, some of which are harmful or deadly to us.

A variety of parasites cause disease. A medically important group are the parasitic worms (helminths), which are estimated to afflict one third of the world's population and are particularly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Central and South America. River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis are two diseases caused by parasitic worms. As the name implies, River Blindness (Onchocerciasis) ultimately leads to blindness, because of chronic inflammation in the cornea. Lymphatic Filariasis, afflicting more than 100 million people, causes chronic swelling and leads to life-long stigmatizing and disabling clinical symptoms, including Elephantiasis (Lymphedema) and Scrotal Hydrocele (Figure 1).

Malaria has been with humankind for as long as we know. It is a mosquito-borne disease caused by single-cell parasites, which invade red blood cells, causing fever, and in severe cases brain damage and death. More than 3.4 billion of the world's most vulnerable citizens are at risk of contracting Malaria, and each year it claims more than 450 000 lives, predominantly among children (Figure 1).

From bacteria and plants to novel anti-parasite therapies

After decades of limited progress in developing durable therapies for parasitic diseases, the discoveries by this year's Laureates radically changed the situation.

Satoshi Ōmura, a Japanese microbiologist and expert in isolating natural products, focused on a group of bacteria, Streptomyces, which lives in the soil and was known to produce a plethora of agents with antibacterial activities (including Streptomycin discovered by Selman Waksman, Nobel Prize 1952). Equipped with extraordinary skills in developing unique methods for large-scale culturing and characterization of these bacteria, Ōmura isolated new strains of Streptomyces from soil samples and successfully cultured them in the laboratory. From many thousand different cultures, he selected about 50 of the most promising, with the intent that they would be further analyzed for their activity against harmful microorganisms (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Satoshi Ōmura searched for novel strains of Streptomyces bacteria as a source for new bioactive compounds. He isolated microbes from soil samples in Japan, cultured them in the laboratory (inset to left) and characterized many thousands of Streptomyces cultures. From those, he selected around 50 cultures that appeared most promising, and one of these cultures later turned out to be Streptomyces avermitilis (inset to right), the source of Avermectin.

William C. Campbell, an expert in parasite biology working in the USA, acquired Ōmura's Streptomyces cultures and explored their efficacy. Campbell showed that a component from one of the cultures was remarkably efficient against parasites in domestic and farm animals. The bioactive agent was purified and named Avermectin, which was subsequently chemically modified to a more effective compound called Ivermectin. Ivermectin was later tested in humans with parasitic infections and effectively killed parasite larvae (microfilaria) (Figure 3). Collectively, Ōmura and Campbell's contributions led to the discovery of a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases.

Figure 3: William C. Campbell discovered that one of Ōmura's Streptomyces cultures was very effective in killing off parasites and the active compound, Avermectin, was purified. Avermectin was further modified to Ivermectin, which turned out to be highly effective in both animals and humans against a variety of parasites, including those that cause River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis.

Malaria was traditionally treated by chloroquine or quinine, but with declining success. By the late 1960s, efforts to eradicate Malaria had failed and the disease was on the rise. At that time, Youyou Tu in China turned to traditional herbal medicine to tackle the challenge of developing novel Malaria therapies. From a large-scale screen of herbal remedies in Malaria-infected animals, an extract from the plant Artemisia annua emerged as an interesting candidate. However, the results were inconsistent, so Tu revisited the ancient literature and discovered clues that guided her in her quest to successfully extract the active component from Artemisia annua. Tu was the first to show that this component, later called Artemisinin, was highly effective against the Malaria parasite, both in infected animals and in humans (Figure 4). Artemisinin represents a new class of antimalarial agents that rapidly kill the Malaria parasites at an early stage of their development, which explains its unprecedented potency in the treatment of severe Malaria.

Figure 4: Youyou Tu searched ancient literature on herbal medicine in her quest to develop novel malaria therapies. The plant Artemisia annua turned out to be an interesting candidate, and Tu developed a purification procedure, which rendered the active agent, Artemisinin, a drug that is remarkably effective against Malaria.

Avermectin, Artemisinin and global health

The discoveries of Avermectin and Artemisinin have fundamentally changed the treatment of parasitic diseases. Today the Avermectin-derivative Ivermectin is used in all parts of the world that are plagued by parasitic diseases. Ivermectin is highly effective against a range of parasites, has limited side effects and is freely available across the globe. The importance of Ivermectin for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world, is immeasurable. Treatment is so successful that these diseases are on the verge of eradication, which would be a major feat in the medical history of humankind. Malaria infects close to 200 million individuals yearly. Artemisinin is used in all Malaria-ridden parts of the world. When used in combination therapy, it is estimated to reduce mortality from Malaria by more than 20% overall and by more than 30% in children. For Africa alone, this means that more than 100 000 lives are saved each year.

The discoveries of Avermectin and Artemisinin have revolutionized therapy for patients suffering from devastating parasitic diseases. Campbell, Ōmura and Tu have transformed the treatment of parasitic diseases. The global impact of their discoveries and the resulting benefit to mankind are immeasurable.

Key publications:

Burg et al., Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (1979) 15:361-367.

Egerton et al., Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (1979) 15:372-378.

Tu et al., Yao Xue Xue Bao (1981) 16, 366-370 (Chinese)

William C. Campbell was born in 1930 in Ramelton, Ireland. After receiving a BA from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland in 1952, he received a PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA in 1957. From 1957-1990 he was with the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, from 1984-1990 as Senior Scientist and Director for Assay Research and Development. Campbell is currently a Research Fellow Emeritus at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA.

Satoshi Ōmura was born in 1935 in the Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan and is a Japanese Citizen. He received a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1968 from University of Tokyo, Japan and a PhD in Chemistry in 1970 from Tokyo University of Science. He was a researcher at the Kitasato Institute, Japan from 1965-1971 and Professor at Kitasato University, Japan from 1975-2007. From 2007, Satoshi Ōmura has been Professor Emeritus at Kitasato University.

Youyou Tu was born in 1930 in China and is a Chinese citizen. She graduated from the Pharmacy Department at Beijing Medical University in 1955. From 1965-1978 she was Assistant Professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, from 1979-1984 Associate Professor and from 1985 Professor at the same Institute. From 2000, Tu has been Chief Professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its Nobel Committee evaluates the nominations. Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded to scientists who have made the most important discoveries for the benefit of mankind.

Nobel Prize® is the registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation