Medicine 2026 · Announced Oct 5
Peter Hegemann
A biophysicist who spent years asking how tiny green algae sense light.
Born 1954 · Germany · Humboldt University of Berlin
24 yrs
The wait, from the first light-switch protein paper (2002) to the prize
1954
Year born
3
People sharing this prize
Oct 5
Announced in 2026
Their part in the prize
Hegemann studied how single-celled algae swim toward light. That question led him and Georg Nagel to the light-gated channel proteins in 2002 and 2003. Those proteins are the switch that optogenetics is built on.
Why it matters
Before this, nobody could test what one type of brain cell does in a living animal. Now labs everywhere use it to study sleep, fear, memory and movement. In 2021 it gave a blind man back a small amount of sight.
The road to the prize
- 2002Nagel and Hegemann describe the first light-gated channel from algae.
- 2003They describe a second, stronger one. It becomes the main tool.
- 2005The Deisseroth lab uses it to fire nerve cells with flashes of light.
- 2007Light is used to change the behavior of a moving mouse.
- 2021A blind patient regains partial sight in a first human test.
- 2026Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Shared with
The official reason for all 3: "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics"