Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2004

The Nobel prizes for 2004 were awarded last night in Stockholm.

This year, two Israeli scientists from the Technion in Haifa, together with an American scientist from UCLA, were awarded the Nobel prize for Chemistry. This the first time Israelis are awarded a Nobel prize in a scientific field, although other Israelis have been Nobel laureates in the past: Shmuel Yosef Agnon won the Literature prize in 1966; Menachem Begin won the Peace prize in 1978; Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won the Peace prize in 1994. An ex-Israeli, Daniel Kahneman, won the prize in Economics in 2002.

The two scientists, Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, won the prize for their research into understanding the processes by which proteins are broken down in our cells, and this understanding will help in developing new drugs.

Kudos to the Nobel laureates from Haifa!