Nobel Prize

Obesity and metabolic diseases

Juleen Zierath speaks to Jens Juul Holst who discovered GLP-1 and Jan Nilsson, professor of experimental cardiovascular research at Lund University, about recent discoveries and treatments for obesity and metabolic diseases.

The talk was recorded at the 2025 Nobel Week Dialogue.

AI’s impact on medicine

Beyond its role in diagnostics, how might AI change healthcare, by for instance improving the discovery and design of new treatments or transforming care systems? Alison Holmes of the Fleming Initiative, Maja Fjaestad of Karolinska Institutet and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Nurse discuss AI’s impact on medicine at the 2025 Nobel Prize Dialogue.

The talk was recorded at the 2025 Nobel Week Dialogue.

The usefulness of useless knowledge?

Nobel Prize laureates Frances Arnold and Paul Nurse come together with John-Arne Røttingen, Chief Executive Officer of Wellcome, to discuss how to strike the right balance between discovery research, understanding how life works, and applications to medicine. How can research make an impact on our lives?

The talk was recorded at the 2025 Nobel Week Dialogue.

 A warm thank you to everyone who made the week so fantastic!

Opening address – Nobel Prize award ceremony 2025

Speech by Professor Astrid Söderbergh Widding, Chair of the Board of the Nobel Foundation

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses,
Esteemed Nobel Prize Laureates, Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the Nobel Foundation, it is my great honour and pleasure to warmly welcome you all to the 2025 Nobel Prize award ceremony. In particular, I wish to welcome the Nobel Prize laureates, their families and friends.

As we gather here in Stockholm for the festivities to celebrate this year’s laureates, it is against a dark backdrop in the world at large. With its rapid, unpredictable, paradoxical and tangled developments, it may seem hard to inspire trust and confidence in the future. In this world, Alfred Nobel’s visionary legacy is a forceful reminder of the transformative powers of science, literature and peace.

Science is a lingua franca for humankind in exploring and expanding the frontiers of human knowledge.

It is international in nature, and it creates a scientific community across borders, values that extend beyond the limits of science itself. This is particularly important to emphasise in times of division, polarisation and conflict. The prizes honour Nobel’s principle that “no consideration be given to nationality but that the prize be awarded to the worthiest person.”

This year, the physics prize is awarded for experimentally establishing macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling in superconducting systems, leading towards technology for quantum computers; the chemistry prize for the development of stable, extremely porous, materials, materials that can be tailormade to capture carbon dioxide, store hydrogen or deliver pharmaceuticals in the body; and the prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of a crucial complementary mechanism that prevents the immune system from attacking healthy organs, thus raising hopes for treatments of autoimmune diseases and new cancer therapies. They all demonstrate how fundamental research, awarded for the greatest benefit of humankind, can also lead to groundbreaking applications.

And the prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, for analysing and modelling conditions for sustained growth, lays bare the importance of a scientific understanding of technological breakthroughs and how inventions lead to old companies losing out to new ones; that is, the role of creative destruction.

The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded today in Oslo, is dedicated to the struggle for democracy, which is now threatened in so many ways across the globe.

Last, but definitely not least, the prize in literature is awarded to an authorship where melancholy and apocalypse seem to dominate the picture, but where the force of art and creation, unfathomable as it is, may still transcend the dark and violent powers.

As the world is at its darkest here in the Northern hemisphere, the Nobel lights illuminate not only the city, but also the world. Through knowledge, integrity and excellence, through creativity and inspiration, the laureates offer hope. They remind us that it is possible, through different paths, to address and come to terms with the many global challenges we face today. But their work also reminds us of our responsibility and the possibilities that lie within our reach. We must not just be passive spectators, but active contributors in defending the freedom of science and literature and the strive for peace to transform the world into a better place for humankind.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2025

Crash course – 2025 Nobel Prizes

How much do you know about the achievements awarded the 2025 Nobel Prizes? Take our one-minute crash course on each of the prizes and find out how they have changed our world. See all crash courses here.

2025 Nobel Prize in Physics: One-minute crash course

Quantum tunnelling

The 2025 physics prize is about quantum mechanics. What is it? Quantum mechanics is the field that scientists use to describe the small world, at the level of atoms and particles.

At this level, different physical laws apply. A special science, quantum mechanics, is needed to explain how everything is connected.

One of the strange effects of quantum mechanics is tunnelling. This means that barriers that should actually be impossible to pass through may still sometimes be traversed.

The 2025 Nobel Prize laureates in physics was awarded for experiments showing that some very strange things that happen in the world of particles also can happen in our part of reality, more specifically in an electrical circuit. An electrical circuit is something that can carry electric current, for example a battery, a pair of wires, and a bicycle light. Tunnelling allows current to flow even if there is an obstacle in the circuit.

If you find quantum mechanics difficult to understand, it’s no wonder. The 1922 Nobel Prize laureate in physics, Niels Bohr, said this in 1952 in a conversation with two other Nobel Prize laureates: “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it.”

Watch our one-minute crash course to discover the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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2025 Nobel Prize in Literature: One-minute crash course

The author László Krasznahorkai

Have you heard of the author László Krasznahorkai?

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” He has written novels, short stories, essays and plays. Many of his books have also been made into movies.

Watch our one-minute crash course to discover the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Prose by László Krasznahorkai

Recommendations on what to read by László Krasznahorkai

2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: One-minute crash course

What is a MOF?

Did you know there are materials that can capture water from desert air?

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 recognises the development of materials with completely new features. The chemistry laureates have created porous metal–organic frameworks (abbreviated as MOFs). These have large cavities that other molecules can move in and out of. MOFs can be used to, for example, capture carbon dioxide and harvest water from the desert air.

Watch our one-minute crash course to discover the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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Interview with Olof Ramström, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, 6 minutes (YouTube)

2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: One-minute crash course

The immune system’s security guards

What happens if our immune system attacks our own cells?

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 is about our immune system. The immune system protects us from viruses, bacteria and other kinds of microorganisms. The Nobel Prize laureates Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi have discovered previously unknown immune cells, so-called regulatory T cells, that act as the immune system’s security guards and prevent immune cells from attacking our own body. 

Watch our one-minute crash course to discover the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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