The people this year’s Nobel Prizes left out

The 2021 Nobel Prizes were awarded to a select few, leaving many deserving individuals out in the cold. This is largely due to the restrictions placed on the number of recipients per prize and eligibility criteria. For instance, the physiology/medicine prize went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their work on optogenetics.

However, it is important to note that optogenetics was first pioneered by Gero Miessenböck, who is now an inventor at the University of Oxford. Hegemann and Nagel played a crucial role in identifying and characterising the protein channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), which was then showcased by Edward Boyden and Ernst Bamberg. In 2007, Feng Zhang also contributed to the adaptation of another protein, halorhodopsin, to control neurons with light.

Despite these significant contributions, only Deisseroth, Hegemann, and Nagel were awarded the prize.

Similarly, the physics prize was awarded to Francis Halzen for his work on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, despite the fact that the observatory is an international collaboration involving over 450 experts from 58 institutions in 14 countries. The Nobel Foundation did not allow the committee to award the prize to the entire collaboration.

Additionally, the chemistry prize was awarded to Frederick Charles Frank for his mathematical explanation of autocatalysis, enantioselective catalysis, and mutual inhibition. However, Frank died in 1998, so his colleagues Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai, who provided experimental evidence for his model, were not recognized.