Nobel Week kicks off: First Prize for Explaining Why We Feel Temperatures

Tomorrow we will know the name of the winner in the field of physics, on Friday – the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Week began with the announcement of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine / Photo by Reuters / Collage “Today”

Nobel Week has started in Stockholm (Sweden), during which the Nobel Prize winners for 2021 will be named. The first winners of this prize of more than $ 1 million were the American physiologist David Julius of the University of California at San Francisco and the American molecular biologist and neurobiologist Ardem Pataputyan of the Scripps Institute.

Reported by Reuters.

Schedule of the Nobel Prize

  • The winners of the Medicine and Physiology Prize were announced in Stockholm on 4 October;
  • The physics laureate will be named on October 5;
  • October 6 – chemistry;
  • On October 7, we will recognize the Nobel Prize winners in literature;
  • October 8 – the name of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate;
  • On October 11, the winner of the Swedish National Bank Prize in Economics in memory of Alfred Nobel (informally called the “Nobel Prize in Economics”) will be named.

For the discovery of receptors for heat, cold

The first laureates were the American physiologist David Julius of the University of California at San Francisco and the American molecular biologist and neurobiologist Ardem Pataputyan of the Scripps Institute. They received this award for the discovery of receptors for heat, cold and touch – more simply, they learned how temperature or, for example, touch, is transformed into human sensations.

In the message of the Nobel Committee it is said that the ability of a person to feel warm, cold and touch has been of interest to researchers for centuries. In the 17th century, the philosopher Rene Descartes suggested that there are certain threads connecting different parts of the skin with the brain – and, for example, if you bring your hand to a fire, a signal of intense heat will be sent to the brain along such a thread.

However, before the discoveries of Julius and Pataputyan, it was unclear how temperature and mechanical stimuli are converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system.“, – noted in the message of the Nobel Committee.

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