Swiss wins 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry

Jacques Dubochet of Switzerland’sUniversity of Lausanne has been awarded this year’s Nobel prize in chemistry together with two other scientists from Britain and the United States.

Announcing the winners on Wednesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three scientists helped develop cryo-electron microscopy – a method to have detailed images of life’s complex machineries in atomic resolution.

Their research is “decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals”, according to the academy.

“This technology has taken biochemistry into a new era,” it added.

The award is worth nine million Swedish kronor (CHF1 million).

Congratulations

Swiss President Doris Leuthard congratulated Dubochet on his award, saying it was the result of excellent research and it made her proud of Switzerland.

Dubochet, born in 1942, is a honorary professor of biophysics at Lausanne University and graduated from Basel and Geneva Universities. He is a former employee of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

He is the eighth Swiss national to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry. In 2002 Kurt Wüthrich was given the award for developing nuclear magnetic resonance methods for studying biological macromolecules.