Nobel Medicine goes to optogenetics trio
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for "discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics," the Karolinska Institute announced Monday. Optogenetics lets researchers switch individual nerve cells in a living brain on or off with pulses of light — a method now used in labs worldwide to map which cells govern memory, emotion, and behavior, with implications for neurological and psychiatric disorders.
The chain of discovery runs from the 1990s: Hegemann, then at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, found the light-sensitive protein behind the alga Chlamydomonas's swim toward light. Teaming with Nagel, he showed it works as a channel-rhodopsin — a protein that opens an ion channel when struck by light. Deisseroth, at Stanford, then proved in 2005 that the protein could be engineered into mammalian nerve cells, giving neuroscientists the causal switch they'd long dreamed of. Deisseroth, 54, is American; Hegemann, 71, and Nagel, 73, are German. They share 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).
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