Scientist David Julius, whose grandparents fled antisemitism in Czarist Russia, wins Nobel Prize in medicine
David Julius, a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, was one of two recipients of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. (University of California, San Francisco)
(JTA) — David Julius, a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, whose grandparents fled antisemitism in Czarist Russia, was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday. He shared the award with Ardem Patapoutian, a molecular biologist and neuroscientist at the Scripps Research center.
The Nobel Prize committee cited Julius and Patapoutian’s research “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch,” which have improved treatments for pain caused by a range of diseases.
Julius was born in 1955 and grew up in Brighton Beach, which was then home to a large population of Russian Jewish emigres. Julius described the neighborhood as “a landing pad for Eastern European immigrants like my grandparents, who fled Czarist Russia and antisemitism in pursuit of a better life.”
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, Julius has spent his career researching the way human senses like touch, pain, and heat function and has used capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that makes them burn, to explore how human nerve endings feel heat.
“These breakthrough discoveries launched intense research activities leading to a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold, and mechanical stimuli,” the Nobel Prize committee wrote in its announcement of the winners.
— The post Scientist David Julius, whose grandparents fled antisemitism in Czarist Russia, wins Nobel Prize in medicine appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
