Harvard Professor Gary Ruvkun Wins 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine

Updated October 7, 2024, at 7:46 a.m.

Gary B. Ruvkun, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a microbiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the Nobel Committee announced early Monday morning.

Ruvkun — who shared the award with Victor R. Ambros, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School — received the prize for their discovery of microRNA, “a new class of tiny RNA molecules that play a crucial role in gene regulation,” according to the Committee.

Ruvkun is the first Harvard Medical School professor to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine in five years, when William G. Kaelin received the prize in 2019. The geneticist has been at Harvard since 1976, when he began his Ph.D. after obtaining his bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ambros and Ruvkun were postdocs in the lab of H. Robert Horvutz, an MIT biology professor and 2002 Nobel Laureate, in the 1980s when they began working together on the research that would win them the Nobel nearly 40 years later.

Gary B. Ruvkun is the first Harvard Medical School professor to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine in five years. By Courtesy of Kris Snibbe / Harvard University

Ambros himself taught at Harvard from 1984 to 1992, when he began teaching at Dartmouth College before later moving to the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel Committee, said during a press conference in Stockholm that he was “able to wake up Gary Ruvkun” to deliver the news about winning the Nobel Prize.

“His wife answered and it took a long time before he came to the phone and sounded very tired, but he quite rapidly was quite excited and happy when he understood what it was all about,” Perlmann added.

Ruvkun and Ambros previously shared the Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2008 in recognition of their work on microRNA. The Lasker Award is sometimes described as the “American Nobel Prize” because a signficiant number of laureates have later recevied the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the work — a list that Ruvkun and Ambros added their names to on Monday.

Though Ambros is no longer affilaited with Harvard, the Nobel Committee said in their announcement on Monday that the microRNA research that led to Ruvkun and Ambros winning the Nobel Prize was performed at Harvard by Ambros, and at HMS and MGH by Ruvkun.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine comes with a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor or $1 million. The offical Nobel Prize ceremony will be held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel’s death.

Monday’s announcement marks the beginning of a week filled with Nobel Prize announcements. On Tuesday, the Nobel committee will announce the prize in physics, followed by the prize in chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

At the press conference, Perlmann said that he had not been able to speak with Ambros to deliver the news.

“I was not able to reach Victor Ambros yet,” Perlmann said. “I left a message on his mobile phone and hope he gives me a call soon.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

—Staff writer Rahem D. Hamid contributed to this report.