George L․ Kumar, Senior Director at AstraZeneca, shared on LinkedIn:
“Nobel-Worthy, Nobel-Less: Six Biology Breakthroughs Stockholm Missed
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is announced on 5 October. A new Science feature looks at the other side of the story: landmark discoveries that never received the prize.
The reasons vary. Some work wasn’t recognized as important in time. Some scientists died before the committee acted, and the prize is never awarded posthumously. Politics or controversy got in the way. And the rule that no more than three people can share a prize excluded whole fields.
Six breakthroughs that missed out:
- DNA as the hereditary material
In 1944, Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty showed that DNA, not protein, carries genetic information. This was nearly a decade before the double helix. Avery was nominated several times, but doubts about the finding lingered, and he died in 1955.
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- The biological basis of memory
Brenda Milner’s studies of the patient H.M. showed that memory for events depends on the hippocampus and that learning a physical skill relies on a separate system. That work helped found brain-based psychology. She has won the Kavli Prize and recently turned 108, but no Nobel.
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- The discovery of stem cells
In 1963, James Till and Ernest McCulloch used radiation-marked bone marrow cells to show that diverse blood cells arise from a single stem cell. The rule of three may have stood in the way. The 2012 stem cell Nobel went to Gurdon and Yamanaka.
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- How cells relay signals
Tony Pawson discovered the SH2 domain, which binds phosphorylated tyrosine on activated receptors and starts signal transduction. That insight underpins many of today’s targeted cancer therapies. He was widely tipped for the prize but died in 2013, aged 60.
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- The active role of glial cells
Ben Barres showed that glia are not just structural ‘glue.’ Astrocytes and microglia help build and prune synapses. He was also a powerful voice for equity in science. He died in 2017. His legacy was a body of work rather than a single ‘eureka’ moment, which the Nobel format tends to miss.
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- Decoding the human genome
The Human Genome Project brought together thousands of scientists across several countries. Craig Venter’s Celera Genomics ran a rival private effort. The result transformed how we find disease variants and drug targets. Its scale, the feud between the public and private teams, and commercial concerns made it hard to choose three laureates.
Why it matters:
Prizes are a lens on science, not the full picture. Many of the foundations of precision medicine, from targetable signaling pathways to genomic reference data, rest on work that Stockholm never honored. Science, as the article notes, is cumulative and collaborative, and often far messier than a single medal suggests.
Which overlooked discovery would you add to the list?”
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