Jews win Nobels in physics, chemistry

Serge Haroche, a French Jewish physicist, has won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and Robert J. Lefkowitz, a Jewish physician and biochemist from New York, has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Haroche won jointly with David Wineland of the University of Colorado, and Lefkowitz won jointly with Brian K. Kobilka, a researcher at Stanford University.

Haroche and Wineland were recognized for “groundbreaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems,” the Nobel Prize website said.

Lefkowitz and Kobilka were recognized for “groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family … of receptors: G-protein–coupled receptors.”

Haroche, 68, is a professor at Collège de France and Ecole Normale Supérieure. Lefkowitz, 61, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. — jta