AAAS Members Awarded Nobels in Chemistry, Medicine

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today that two U.S. scientists had been named winners of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Peter Agre, a professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Roderick MacKinnon, a biophysicist and professor at Rockefeller University, are both members of AAAS. MacKinnon, also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was recognized for his groundbreaking discovery of the structure of potassium channels, published in the AAAS journal, Science, on 3 April, 1998 ("The Structure of the Potassium Channel: Molecular Basis of K+ Conduction and Sensitivity").

Earlier this week, AAAS member and fellow Paul C. Lauterbur, whose "discoveries led to the development of modern magnetic resonance imaging (MRI.)," was awarded the 2003; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. A faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Lauterbur shares the prize with Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in England.

See related articles for more information on Agre and MacKinnon, or Lauterbur.