Father-son Nobel Prize Quinella

October 6, 2006 One of the feel-good stories of the week was Stanford University’s Roger Kornberg winning the 2006 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, completing a rare father-son Nobel Prize quinella. Forty-seven years ago, the then twelve-year-old Kornberg (top right) was in Stockholm to see his father (centre right), Arthur Kornberg, receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1959) for his studies of how genetic information is transferred from one DNA-molecule to another. Given that only 763 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to individuals in history, the chance of two members of the same family winning is not as small as you might think. Indeed, there have been four people who have won the prize twice, four married couples, one mother and daughter, one father and daughter, six father and son combinations and one pair of brothers who have one the prize. The most prolific Nobel Laureate family is without doubt the Curies – husband-wife team Marie and Pierre Curie won the Physics prize in 1903, Marie won again for Chemistry in 1911, then their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and her husband Frederic Joliot won for Chemistry in 1935. Stanford shared a second Nobel Prize this week when Andrew Fire shared this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Craig Mello.

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