According to the panel, the Nobel Medicine Prize was awarded to US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday for their discoveries on temperature and touch receptors. The award money originates from a legacy left by Alfred Nobel, the prize’s founder, who died in 1895.
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Last year’s prize went to three scientists who identified the liver-wreaking hepatitis C virus, paving the way for treatments and diagnostics to prevent the disease from spreading through blood banks.
While the prize for 2020 was given out while the epidemic was still raging, this is the first time the whole selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19. Each year at the end of January, nominations shut, and the new coronavirus was still mostly restricted to China at the time.
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The Nobel season begins on Tuesday with the physics prize, followed by the chemistry prize on Wednesday, the much-anticipated literary prize on Thursday, and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, before the economics prize on Monday, October 11.
