Nobel Medicine Prize awarded to US-German trio for work on optogenetics

American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries on…

American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries on light and optogenetics that have helped understand how the brain works.

The Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university said Deisseroth, 54, Hegemann, 71, and Nagel, 73, were selected for their “discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”.

Optogenetics “makes it possible to ‌switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain”, said Thomas Perlmann, secretary general of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute.