Who are Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel? Trio wins Nobel Prize in Medicine for work on optogenetics

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to the trio of Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their discoveries pertaining to light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. The Nobel assembly at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital Stockholm announced the winners on Monday (October 5). This is the 117th time that the coveted prize has been given. The three scientists will share a prize of 12m Swedish kronor.

Karl Deisseroth

Karl Deisseroth, born in 1971, is an American neuroscientist and author, widely regarded as one of the founders of modern optogenetics. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University. He holds a PhD and an MD from Stanford University. Deisseroth completed postdoctoral training, medical internship, and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.


He is currently the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, as well as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Peter Hegemann

Born in Muenster, Germany, Peter Hegemann is a biophysicist known for discovering the proteins that made optogenetics possible. He graduated in chemistry and received his doctoral degree in biochemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in 1994. He is a professor and former head of the Department of Biophysics at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Hegemann is a member of the German National Academy Leopoldina, the European Molecular Biology Organisation, and the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Science, according to the Washington-based National Academy of Sciences.

Georg Nagel

Georg Nagel is a German biophysicist. Born in 1953, he studied biology and biophysics at the University of Konstanz in Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt in 1988. He currently serves as a professor at the University of Würzburg in Germany.

The Nobel Prize

"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 is awarded for optogenetics — a method that makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings and behaviours in the living brain," the awarding body said in a statement.

The Nobel Prize is a set of prestigious awards given each year to people for outstanding work that benefits humankind. The first prizes were handed out in 1901. They are awarded in six fields: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences.