NAS Members Receive Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and NAS international member Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance. The laureates identified the immune system’s security guards, regulatory T cells, which prevent immune cells from attacking our own body. These discoveries launched the field of peripheral tolerance, spurring the development of medical treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit. A major question in physics is the maximum size of a system that can demonstrate quantum mechanical effects. This year’s Nobel Prize laureates conducted experiments with an electrical circuit in which they demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in a system big enough to be held in the hand, providing opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Omar M. Yaghi for the development of metal–organic frameworks. He shares the award with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson. Together, they have created molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow. These constructions, metal–organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions.