Receiving the Nobel Prize in life is in itself an exceptional event. But come to think of it, it is even more so to have it awarded after the same award has already been won by a relative of the same family. If the successes shared with a partner are even more predictable – following living not only as a couple, but also in professional contact – it is less obvious that success concerns two brothers. Or, as in the case of Svante Pääbo, father and son. The latest winner of the most coveted prize in the field of medicine is in fact the second descendant of Sune Bergström, awarded with the same recognition in 1982 for his studies on prostaglandins and died in 2004. The Nobel Prize is a family matter, one might say. Also. But not for the first time.
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Five Nobel Prizes at the Curie house
The best known example is that of the Curie family, with Marie (Maria Salomea Sklodowska) e Pierre Curieawarded together in 1903 with the Nobel Prize for Physics (with the French Antoine Henri Bequerel). Their success already contained two firsts: that of the first woman and a Nobel-winning couple.
But that was not all, of course, because 32 years later it was their daughter’s turn, Irene, win the same award. This time the one dedicated to Chemistry, together with her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie. Theme: the discovery of artificial radioactivity. A record, that of the Curie family, to which Marie also contributed with the second Nobel: still a prize for Chemistry, following the discovery of radium and polonium.
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Other precedents: the Thompson and Bohr families
In the same wake of the Curie family, a few years later, the Thompson. Joseph John was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 (for investigations into the conduction of electricity by gases), his son George Paget in 1937 (in a condominium with the American Clinton Joseph Davisson) for the discovery of the diffraction of electrons from crystals. The recognition passed from one generation to the next even in the family Bohr: con Niels awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 (for understanding the atomic structure) and successor Aage in 1975 (with the Danish Ben Roy Motolson and the American Leo James Rainwater) for having discovered the connection between collective motion and motion of particles in the nuclei of the atom.
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At the Bragg home the only case of Nobel shared between father and son
In the field of medicine, another Swede had preceded Pääbo: Ulf von Eulerawarded together with the American Julius Axelrod for research on norepinephrine (1970). Forty-one years earlier, in 1929, his father Hans von Euler-Chelpin had received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (with English Arthur Harden) for research on the fermentation of sugar and fermenting enzymes.
“Opposite” awards instead for the family Kornberg: with the father Arthur awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1956 (together with the Spanish Severo Ochoa) for the discovery of DNA and RNA synthesis mechanisms and the son Roger David awarded with the Chemistry Prize in 2006 thanks to the discoveries on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.
Only one case of assigning the same title for father and son: protagonists William Henry Bragg and the young man William Lawrence (still the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize), recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015. Same figure for the prizes awarded to two brothers: Jan e Nicholas Tinbergenrespectively Nobel Prize in Economics (1969) and Medicine (1973).