5 x Nordic Nobel Prize Laureates

Arvid Carlsson, Professor of Pharmacology at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000 together with Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel, for their work on dopamine. Arvid Carlsson, passed away 2018, at the age of 95.

Arvid Carlsson was one of the Gothenburg researchers who set the stage for close cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Astra, later AstraZeneca.

Arvid Carlsson received The Nobel Prize for his pioneering research on the signal substances of the brain. By acquiring knowledge on how substances such as dopamine and serotonin can be influenced, Carlsson and his research team were part of developing medicines that increase the mobility of patients with Parkinson’s disease and help improve the lives of those with schizophrenia. In addition, their research laid the foundation for modern medicines against anxiety and depression.

Arvid Carlsson was one of the Gothenburg researchers who set the stage for close cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Astra, later AstraZeneca – a collaboration that led to internationally renowned medicines like Seloken, Zelmid, Plendil and Losec.

Norway’s first Nobel Prize in Medicine

Professors May-Britt and Edvard Moser won Norway’s first Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, in 2014. The Mosers have been faculty members at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) since 1996. They shared the Nobel award with their mentor and colleague, Professor John O’Keefe from University College of London.

The honor was for work on what is being called the brain’s inner GPS, or global positioning system. This neural network provides the brain’s sense of place and internal map of the surroundings. The system tracks orientation and direction, with real-time updates for wayfinding.

In 1971, O’Keefe and colleagues first reported “place cells” in the hippocampus. The activation pattern of these cells reflects the external environment. Work in the early 2000s by the Mosers built on this discovery, adding information about distance and direction to this cognitive mapping system.

We’re simply trying to understand how the brain works.

“We’re focusing on basic research questions,” said Edvard Moser. “Once someone takes it further and applies it, for example to early Alzheimer’s disease, it will be interesting to the pharmaceutical industry, but we aren’t taking those steps. We’re simply trying to understand how the brain works.”

Passion and hard work – like a musician

Tomas Lindahl received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015. He received the Prize jointly with American chemist Paul L. Modrich and Turkish chemist Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. I met him in Stockholm during the Nobel week and learned more about him and his career.

According to Professor Lindahl successful scientists have a lot in common with successful musicians. It takes dedication and many hours of practicing. His own passion and hard work led him to a completely new research field – and a Nobel Prize.

“I like to compare research to artistic activities. Great musicians do not complain when they have to practice. They feel lucky to be able to get paid doing their hobby, and they want to become as good as they possibly can. That is how I feel about my research,” explained Lindahl.

At the end of the 1960s Lindahl started investigating how stable DNA really is. At this time, the general belief was that the DNA molecule was extremely resilient. Evolution requires mutations, but only a limited number per generation.

Nature is smarter than we think.

“We did several interesting projects together. Is the literature accurate with what we observe in the lab?” said Lindahl. “First you have to convince yourself, then others, and you build your observations on reliable experimental data, which is really exciting. Nature is smarter than we think. It is trying to tell us something, and this has a meaning.”

Driven by curiosity and fascination

Regarded as one of the founders of paleogenomics, Svante Pääbo’s seminal research into the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome has given us so much in terms of understanding the tree of life, and he was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

He is already a scientific superstar.

The Prize for Pääbo has not quite come out of the blue. Hugo Zeberg, Assistant professor at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet said to NLS that “He had gotten all the prizes he could possibly get except the Nobel Prize. He is already a scientific superstar.”

Those that have worked with Svante Pääbo readily credit him with being the father of field, but also how he “will be the first to say it’s not just his work. It’s a team of people,” said paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

“We have only just scratched the surface”

Morten Meldal, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and Head of the Center of Evolutionary Chemical Biology, was awarded the Nobel Prize 2022 “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry” together with Barry Sharpless and Carolyn Bertozzi.

As a  young boy, Morten Meldal was always fascinated by nature. He would often travel to his grandparent’s farm in the Danish countryside, or his family home in Sweden, surrounded by the forests, nature, and the complexity of natural life, whether it was picking mushrooms or collecting butterflies.

He would often travel to his grandparent’s farm in the Danish countryside, or his family home in Sweden, surrounded by the forests, nature, and the complexity of natural life.

As a teenager, he built rockets and firecrackers, before going to a technical university with a primary interest in programming and computing, and making his own programmes. These interests eventually led to him deciding to pursue a career in chemistry.