The 2026 Nobel Prizes in science: all the laureates and the question of the gender gap

The three science prizes of 2026

In October 2026, the laureates of the Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry were announced. Euronews reporters Marta Iraola and Pascal Davis, who followed the award ceremony, analysed the results in the first episode of the Password podcast, noting that this year all the science prizes went to men.

Medicine: optogenetics

The Physiology or Medicine prize went to the American Karl Deisseroth and the Germans Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel — for discoveries related to light-sensitive ion channels and optogenetics. According to Iraola, the method makes it possible to show how nerve cells form memories and emotional behaviour in a living brain. The research is considered a step forward in understanding how the brain works and already has a practical continuation: a gene therapy based on optogenetics is undergoing clinical trials and, in its early stages, has shown the ability to partially restore sight to blind people.

Physics: IceCube

The Physics prize went to the Belgian scientist Francis Halzen for his contribution to the creation of the IceCube neutrino observatory and the discovery of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. As Davis described it, he turned a massive ice array at the South Pole into a detector capable of registering almost invisible particles arriving at Earth from space. The observatory was built between 2004 and 2010; today the project involves an international team of more than 450 people from 14 countries. Gwenhaël Willems de Wasseige, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain who is part of the team, noted that Halzen, despite working in the United States, maintains close ties with Belgian universities, four of which are involved in the IceCube project.

Chemistry: mirror molecules

The Chemistry prize was awarded to the Frenchman Henri B. Kagan and the Japanese Kenso Soai for research on molecular mirror images. Some molecules, such as amino acids, exist in two mirror forms, but living organisms use only one of them. The laureates discovered how chemical reactions can amplify an initial excess of one form and lead to the formation of only one of the two possible ones. As Iraola noted, the work has practical applications, in particular in the development of pharmaceutical drugs.

The gender question

In addition to the science prizes, the 2026 awards went to Anne Carson (literature) and Navi Pillay (the Peace Prize); the remaining laureates are men. Iraola explains the underrepresentation of women in the science categories by the broader underrepresentation of women in this field of research: the prizes are awarded for work whose development takes decades, so today's laureates reflect the gender norms of the 1970s–1990s, when science was often inaccessible to women. At the same time, she said, the number of female laureates has been slowly growing in recent decades, and she hopes this trend will continue.