Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Nomination and Selection

Nomination and Selection

It was important to Nobel that the prize be awarded for a "discovery" and that it was of "greatest benefit on mankind". Per the provisions of the will, only select persons are eligible to nominate individuals for the award. These include members of academies around the world, professors of medicine in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland, as well as professors of selected universities and research institutions in other lands. Past Nobel laureates may also nominate. Until 1977, all professors of Karolinska Institutet together decided on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. That year, changes in Swedish law forced the Institute to make any documents pertaining to the Nobel Prize public and it was considered necessary to establish a legally independent body for the Prize work. Therefore, the Nobel Assembly was constituted, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet. It elects the Nobel Committee with 5 members who evaluate the nominees, the Secretary who is in charge of the organization, and each year 10 adjunct members to assist in the evaluation of candidates. In 1968, a provision was added that no more than three persons may share a Nobel prize. The 2011 winners were announced 3 October 2011.

True to its mandate, the Committee has selected researchers working in the basic sciences over those who have made applied contributions. Harvey Cushing, a pioneering American neurosurgeon who identified Cushing's syndrome never was awarded the prize, nor was Sigmund Freud, as his psychoanalysis lacks hypotheses that can be tested experimentally. The public expected Jonas Salk or Albert Sabin to win the prize for their development of the polio vaccines, but instead the award went to John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins whose basic discovery that the polio virus could reproduce in monkey cells in laboratory preparations was a fundamental finding that led to the elimination of the disease of polio.

Through the 1930s, there were frequent prize winners in classical Physiology, but after that the field began dissolving into specialties. The last classical physiology winners were John Eccles, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley in 1963 for their findings regarding "unitary electrical events in the central and peripheral nervous system."