The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2003 "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes", with one half of the prize to Peter Agre "for the discovery of water channels" and one half of the prize to Roderick MacKinnon "for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels".

Salt and water are important actors in the chemistry of life. Life on earth, and our own lives, originated in salt water – in the oceans and in the womb. Yet only fairly recently have we understood how water molecules and salt ions are transported in and out through the cell walls.