2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 3 October 2005.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Barry J. Marshall was born in 1951 in Kalgoorlie, Australia, and is affiliated with NHMRC Helicobacter pylori Research Laboratory, QEII Medical Centre, Nedlands and the University of Western Australia, Perth. J. Robin Warren was born in 1937 in Adelaide, Australia.

Why it matters

The two Australian doctors showed that most stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium and not by stress. Marshall famously drank a culture of the bacteria to prove his case, and ulcers can now be cured with antibiotics.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.