Women winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine

Just 12 women have won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine since it was founded in 1901. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two of these female Nobel Laureates - both extraordinary scientists from Norway and France.

Professor May-Britt Moser won the prize in 2014 for the discovery of a type of cell in the brains of rats, which helps them locate their position in space. She won the prize jointly with her former husband Edvard, with whom she had collaborated since they were students. Now divorced, they still run a world-renowned neuroscience lab - the Kavli Institute - together in the far north of Norway, where they are pursuing research that could further our understanding and treatment of Alzheimer's in humans.

Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was a researcher at the Institut Pasteur in Paris in the early 1980s when a new and terrifying disease emerged - AIDS. She and her colleague very quickly identified the HIV retrovirus as the cause, and set about finding a treatment. In 2008 she was recognised by the Nobel committee for this achievement, and she says this has opened doors for her work that otherwise would have remained closed - enabling her to better advocate on behalf of the vulnerable people most affected by HIV-AIDS.

Image:
(L) Francoise Barré-Sinoussi. Credit: Institut Pasteur
(R) May-Britt Moser. Credit: TiTT Melhuus