Philip Drake

Curiosity often sparks scientific breakthroughs. For 2026 medicine laureate Peter Hegemann, it began with a question: how could a tiny green alga called Chlamydomonas react so rapidly to light? The Chlamydomonas algae is famous for its ability to swim towards light. When the alga is stirred into a petri dish, the liquid turns a faint green colour. If one side of the dish is illuminated, the green colour moves towards the light source, as the microscopic algae swim towards it. The algae sense the light with an eyespot, a dot on the cell’s surface that contains a light-capturing molecule, retinal. Hegemann discovered electrical signals in the light-sensitive eyespot that occurred just half a millisecond after illumination, far faster than the response of the human eye. He could only think of one explanation for this ultrafast response: the process must be much simpler than in a human eye. He proposed that a single protein could both detect light and act as an ion channel, an idea initially met with scepticism. After years of experiments with his colleague Georg Nagel, Hegemann's hypothesis proved to be correct. Together, they discovered proteins that functioned exactly as he had predicted: ion channels that opened in response to light. This breakthrough laid the foundation for optogenetics, a revolutionary technique that allows scientists to control individual nerve cells with light. What began as a question about a microscopic alga ultimately helped transform the field of neuroscience. Read more about the newly awarded 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: bit.ly/4jNd5w7

“Our prime minister wants to call me…” 2026 chemistry laureate Kenso Soai needed to cut short our interview when he learnt that the Japanese prime minister was trying to reach him. Before then, the new laureate spoke to us about his excitement on being awarded the #NobelPrize. Soai also explained how it feels to have researchers all over the world studying his famous Soai reaction – one of the most spectacular chemical experiments ever conducted.

Kenso Soai – awarded the 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry – designed the first chemical reaction in which only one of the potential mirror images was formed. Other than life itself, no one had ever achieved this feat. The Soai reaction is one of the most spectacular chemical experiments ever conducted.

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”

“There is a big picture that brings it all into relief and my hope is that we can increase empathy and understanding,” says 2026 medicine laureate Karl Deisseroth. As a medical student, Deisseroth completed part of his training at a psychiatric clinic. He was struck by the patients’ suffering and their need for help. At the same time, he began to wonder how the brain could function so differently from one person to another. Deisseroth was awarded this year's medicine prize, together with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel, for discoveries leading to optogenetics – a biological technique making it possible to switch the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain on or off. Optogenetics is now helping us understand more about how nerve cells shape memories, emotions and behaviour in the living brain. Learn more about the 2026 medicine prize: bit.ly/4ru82ml

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”

BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

In September 1928 Alexander Fleming returned from holiday to a curious sight. He saw that bacteria he had been growing on a culture plate had been killed in an area close to where a mould was accidentally growing. It was to be a monumental discovery – Alexander Fleming had just discovered penicillin. He isolated the mould and showed that it released a substance that inhibited bacterial growth. He named the substance penicillin after the name of the mould. Fleming reported his ground-breaking results in the scientific paper 'On the antibacterial action of cultures of a Penicillium with special reference to their use in the isolation of B. influenzae', published in British Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1929. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. More about Fleming: bit.ly/2XuCctW

"Anytime you try to teach the subjects without teachers who love the subject, it is doomed to failure and is a foolish thing to do." Remembering physicist and professor Richard Feynman who was famous for his easy-to-understand explanations of scientific concepts. Learn more about Feynman: bit.ly/3pHjOcl