The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 was awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”
David Julius
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
Born: 4 November 1955, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
Prize motivation: “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”
Prize share: 1/2
“Let me just finish pouring some water into my coffee maker, because that’s going to be essential!”
Telephone interview with David Julius following the announcement of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on 4 October 2021. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Prize Outreach.
Turning to some natural product pharmacology was one key to David Julius’ success in unlocking the mysteries of how we sense temperature. As he describes in this brief interview, news that Stockholm was calling reached him in a rather roundabout route in the middle of the night, via a call from his sister-in-law and then a message sent to his wife, Holly Ingraham. Here, to the backdrop of making coffee to help prepare for the busy day ahead, he talks about the possibilities arising from his discoveries, what great scientists taught him about the best way to approach research, and what his mother said when she heard the news!
Ardem Patapoutian
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021
Born: 1967, Beirut, Lebanon
Affiliation at the time of the award: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA
Prize motivation: “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”
Prize share: 1/2
“I had ‘do not disturb’ on my phone actually, so I didn’t get his phone calls”
Telephone interview with Ardem Patapoutian following the announcement of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on 4 October 2021. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Prize Outreach.
As Ardem Patapoutian says, sometimes the familiar can yield the best surprises. When it comes to figuring out how our senses work, the sense of touch “was kind of the big elephant in the room.” Patapoutian had his phone on Do Not Disturb when Stockholm tried to call him but he got the news, via his dad, just in time to watch the press conference, sitting in bed with his son Luca. He was caught there to record this brief call moments after the public announcement of his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and he describes how finally finding the sensors that allow cells to detect pressure has opened up whole new unexpected vistas of phenomena that are governed by sensitivity to touch. As he reflects, “Nobody ever could have thought that pressure sensing is related to these processes.”
Source: Nobelprize.org
