Three scientists won Nobel prize in chemistry for developing a technique to produce detailed images of life’s complex molecular machinery.
Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson will receive equal shares of the 9m Swedish kronor (£825,000) prize, which was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday, reports The Guardian.
The technique they developed, called cryo-electron microscopy, has allowed the structure of biomolecules to be studied in high-resolution for the first time, an advance that revolutionised the field of biochemistry.
Last year’s prize went to three European chemists for developing “nano-machines”, an advance that paved the way for the world’s first smart materials.
On Monday, three American scientists shared the 2017 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for their painstaking work on circadian rhythms and the Nobel prize in chemistry went to another American trio for the first observation of gravitational waves.