Despite the height of the coronavirus infection, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded in Stockholm in October 2020. This event was held online for the first time and was not accompanied by the traditional honoring of the laureates. In his will, Alfred Nobel entrusted the selection of the winner in this nomination to the Karolinska Medical and Surgical University of Stockholm, and the first award in this nomination took place in 1901. Since then, this event has been held 110 times, and 216 scientists have become laureates of the prize in the field of physiology and medicine, since the nominees are often not just one, but a group of researchers. This happened in 2020 - for research in the field of studying the hepatitis C virus, three scientists received the most prestigious award: the British Michael Houghton and the Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice. Due to the results of the research, which these three people conducted separately from each other, for the first time it became possible to completely eliminate the virus from the body.
Discovery of Hepatitis C Virus: Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 2020