HIV, HPV Researchers Honored, But One Scientist Is Left Out

摘要

Nobel Prize stories often recount the early-morning phone call that startles a winner from slumber, followed by disbelief, and finally elation. When Robert Gallo's phone rang early on the morning of 6 October, he felt everything but elation. As a reporter explained to him, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine had been awarded to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute in Paris for their discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. A third prize went to German virologist Harald zur Hausen for finding that human papillomaviruses (HPVs) can cause cervical cancer. Given that Nobel Prize rules allow only three researchers to share an award each year, this meant that Gallo, whose lab has done pathbreaking research about AIDS since the epidemic surfaced, would join the long list of accomplished researchers whose work has been snubbed by the Nobel Assembly.