STOCKHOLM – Sweden’s Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for “mechanistic studies of DNA repair.”
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work “has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions.” Their findings have been used for the development of new cancer treatments, among other things, the academy said.
Lindahl, 77, is an emeritus group leader at Francis Crick Institute and Emeritus director of Cancer Research UK at Clare Hall Laboratory in Britain.
Modrich, born in 1946, is an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.
Sancar, 69, is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The 8 million Swedish kronor (about $960,000) award will be handed out along with the other Nobel Prizes on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
Canadian Arthur McDonald was named Tuesday as a co-winner of the physics award. He and Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita were cited for the discovery of neutrino oscillations and their contributions to experiments showing that neutrinos change identities.
This year’s medicine prize went to scientists from Japan, the U.S. and China who discovered drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases.
The Nobel announcements continue with literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award on Monday.
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