Announced annually in October, this year’s Nobel Prize recipients highlight significant contributions to science, literature and the humanities. Though none of the honorees announced this year are UT Austin-affiliated, eight Longhorns have received a Nobel Prize since 1946, with the last being announced in 2019. The Daily Texan compiled a list of the five winners who have passed away and their groundbreaking achievements.
Herman Joseph Muller (1890-1967)
Muller, a UT genetics professor in the 1920s, won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that radiation causes mutations — random changes in DNA sequences. When exposing fruit flies to X-ray radiation, Muller found that their DNA developed more mutations. Muller’s work gave scientists a simple method to induce mutations for research purposes and encouraged hospital radiologists to take more precautions when using radiation.
Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003)
Prigogine, a former UT professor, earned the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a theory explaining how life functions. Challenging physics concepts, his theory said systems grow more disordered and chaotic over time. Prigogine theorized that certain systems go against the norm, growing more organized at first. His work sparked new scientific disciplines focusing on chaos, helping scientists understand complex structures like traffic jams and growing cities.
Donnall Thomas (1920-2012)
Thomas earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UT in the 1940s before winning the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside Joseph E. Murray. Thomas studied bone marrow, a spongy tissue found in bones and producer of blood cells. In 1956 and 1968, Thomas successfully transplanted bone marrow cells into patients with leukemia, a cancer affecting blood in the body. This life-saving procedure allows doctors to treat blood-related cancers and other diseases.
John Goodenough (1922-2023)
Former materials science and engineering professor Goodenough secured the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, at the ripe age of 97, making him the oldest winner in Nobel history. Goodenough helped design the lithium-ion battery, allowing for optimized batteries with more energy storage and longer lifespan. These rechargeable, common batteries are used in everything from smartphones and laptops to scooters and electric cars.
Steven Weinberg (1933-2021)
Weinberg won the physics Nobel Prize in 1979, alongside Sheldon Lee Glashow and Abdus Salam, four years before he started teaching at UT. His research involved four fundamental forces that dictate interaction between objects: gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force. Finding a deeper relationship between electromagnetism and weak nuclear force, Weinberg set the stage for a host of discoveries regarding particle properties and interactions, an advanced model of how particles function and eventually aided scientists in discovering the Higgs-boson particle, better known as the “God particle.”
