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1995
The honor: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1995 went jointly to Edward B. Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, and Eric F. Wieschaus, for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development — the work that found, in the fruit fly, the genes that lay out a body plan. It is the only Nobel Prize on this city's ledger, and it enters at two strengths, both documented. Wieschaus was born in South Bend on 8 June 1947. And the science began here as well as the life: after a childhood that took the family away in 1953, he returned for his undergraduate years at the University of Notre Dame (B.S. 1969) and first met the fruit fly in Professor Harvey Bender's laboratory there. The doctorate is Yale's (1974) and the prize work was done at Heidelberg; the birth and the first formation are this ground's. His full profile stands in the Famous People section of this history; the ledger entry is the prize, its year, its category, and the tie at its exact double strength.
The rest of the Nobel ledger: Empty. No other laureate was born in South Bend, raised here, or holds a chair here, in any of the six categories; the Peace roster — the category a reader asks about first — gives the city no name at any strength. The ledger prints the one name and the empty remainder together, because that is the whole of it.
Sources:
- NobelPrize.org, the 1995 Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the Wieschaus facts page — the shared prize, the South Bend birth on 8 June 1947, the Notre Dame B.S. of 1969.
- The Famous People section of this history — the South Bend childhood to 1953, the Bender laboratory, the Yale doctorate and the Heidelberg prize work.