Neuroscience and Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Foundation recognized, just six years after its founding, the contributions of contributions of scientists related to what we know today as neurosciences in 1906 awarded the prize for the prize for the area of “Physiology or Medicine” to two scientists: Camillo Golgi, Italian, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish, who carried out pioneering research on the structure of the nervous system (Ramón y Cajal is considered the author of the “Neural Doctrine”). Since then, the Nobel Prize—whether in Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry or even Physics—has been awarded to scientists working in the field of neuroscience and and in related fields for over 15 occasions, occasions, in addition to other  where it was awarded for contributions that have had an impact on neuroscientific research.

Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of these awards, followed by a timeline drawn up with the help of artificial intelligence on the main historical milestones related to this exciting field of human knowledge.

Nobel Prizes for advances in or related to neuroscience

Year	Award-Winning People	Nacionality	Research Area	Contribution to neuroscience	Award discipline
1906	Camilo Golgi y  Santiago Ramón y Cajal	Italy, Spain	Neural structure	Discovery of the structure of the nervous system (“neuron doctrine”)	Physiology or  Medicine
1932	Charles Sherrington,  Edgar Adrian	United Kingdom	Neuronal physiology	Motor and sensory functions of neurons	Physiology or  Medicine
1944	Joseph Erlanger,  Herbert Gasser	United States	Nerve conduction	Function of different types of nerve fibers	Physiology or  Medicine
1961	Georg von Békésy	United States (born in Hungary)	Auditory perception	Cochlea physiology and sound  processing	Physiology or  Medicine
1963	Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley, John Eccles	United Kingdom, Australia	Action potentials and synapses	Transmission of electrical impulses in neurons and synapses	Physiology or  Medicine
1970	Bernard Katz, Ulf von Euler, Julius Axelrod	United Kingdom, Sweden, United States	Neurotransmitters	Chemical mechanisms of the synapse	Physiology or  Medicine
1981	Roger Sperry, David Hubel, Torsten Wiesel	United States, Canada, Sweden	Visual perception	Visual processing in the cortex; Hemispheric Specialization	Physiology or  Medicine
1986	Rita Levi-Montalcini, Stanley Cohen	Italy, United States	Neural development	Discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF)	Physiology or  Medicine
1991	Erwin Neher, Bert Sakmann	Germany	Ion channels	Patch-clamp technique for recording individual channel currents in neural membranes	Physiology or  Medicine
2000	Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, Eric Kandel	Sweden, United States	Neurotransmission and memory	Dopamine, Intracellular Signaling, and Memory Consolidation	Physiology or  Medicine
2004	Richard Axel, Linda Buck	United States	Olfactory system	Olfactory receptors and organization of the smell perception system	Physiology or  Medicine
2008	Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, Roger Y. Tsien	Japan, United States	Genetic manipulation and protein expression	Visualization of neurons and proteins in vivo using fluorescent proteins	Chemistry
2012	Robert Lefkowitz, Brian Kobilka	United States	Cell receptors and  signaling	Understanding Synaptic Receptors, Brain Pharmacology, Psychotropic Drugs	Chemistry
2014	Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, Shuji Nakamura	Japan	Development of the  efficient blue LED	Light source to activate opsins in optogenetics, a technique to control neurons with light	Physics
2014	Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, William E. Moerner	United States, Romania	High-resolution  microscopy	Visualization of synapses, ion channels, and proteins in vivo at the nanometer scale	Chemistry
2017	effrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, Michael W. Young	United States	Circadian rhythm	Discovery of the molecular mechanisms of the biological clock	Physiology or  Medicine
2017	Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, Richard Henderson	Switzerland, Germany, Scotland	Cryo-electron microscopy	Structure of ion channels, synaptic receptors, membrane proteins	Chemistry
1986	David Julius, Ardem Patapoutian	United States	Somatosensory  perception	Receivers for temperature (TRPV1) and pressure (Piezo)	Physiology or  Medicine