Revolutionary Discovery Wins the Nobel!

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology was jointly awarded to three physician-cum- scientists for their discovery of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability

Just like each year, the Nobel Prizes were awarded to scientists in the five fields and this year’s physiology Nobel was shared by William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe and Francis Crick. Everyone knows that animals require oxygen to live. The cells in the body of animals use this oxygen to break down foods to generate energy. However, until these scientists made their discovery, no one knew how the cells in the body were able to adapt to oxygen availability. Their discovery is going to pave the way for the development of new drugs and therapies aimed at inhibiting or activating the oxygen-related processes which cause diseases like cancer.

This brings us to an interesting question – How many Indians have won Nobel prizes and in what fields? Let’s take a quick walkthrough to acquaint ourselves with Indian Nobel Laureates!

India’s first Nobel Laureate was none other than Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel in Literature. The other Indians who were awarded the Nobel as Indian citizens include C.V Ramam(Physics), Mother Teresa(Peace), Amartya Sen(Economics), Kailash Satyarthi(Peace).

Other Nobel Laureates who were citizens of other countries but are of Indian origin include Har Gobind Khorana(Physiology/Medicine), Subramanyan Chandrashekhar(Physics), and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan(Chemistry).