Nobel Prize for HU Neuroscientist Peter Hegemann
Prof. Dr. Peter Hegemann is being honored for his research in the field of optogenetics. Together with the other two Nobel laureates, he has laid the foundation for a new era in neuroscience.
Berlin, October 5, 2026. Prof. Dr. Peter Hegemann, together with Prof. Dr. Georg Nagel (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg) and Prof. Dr. Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA), has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries regarding light-controlled ion channels and optogenetics.
“I extend my warmest congratulations to Peter Hegemann on winning the Nobel Prize—the world’s most prestigious scientific award! He is receiving the prize for his outstanding research in the field of optogenetics—according to the Nobel Committee, he has laid the foundation for a new era in the neurosciences,” says Prof. Dr. Julia von Blumenthal, President of Humboldt University of Berlin. “Peter Hegemann is a visionary researcher: the discovery of light-controlled ion channels in green algae took place as part of a basic research project. Humboldt University is fortunate to count Peter Hegemann among its researchers. It is largely thanks to his dedication that a new research building is currently being constructed in Berlin for the promising field of optobiology.”
The Origins of Optogenetics
Hegemann’s research began with the question of how single-celled green algae perceive light and use it to guide their movement. As early as 1991, he and Dr. Hartmann Harz (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) demonstrated that light triggers electrical ion currents in the green alga Chlamydomonas within a very short time.
Together with Georg Nagel and other researchers, Hegemann subsequently identified and characterized the channelrhodopsins responsible for this process. These extraordinary proteins combine a light sensor and an ion channel in a single molecule: light opens the channel, thereby altering a cell’s electrical potential within milliseconds. In 2002, the researchers described channelrhodopsin-1 as a directly light-controlled ion channel; Channelrhodopsin-2 followed in 2003, which is particularly well-suited for controlling the electrical activity of other cells using light.
These discoveries provided the molecular basis for optogenetics. In 2005, Karl Deisseroth and colleagues demonstrated that channelrhodopsin-2 can be used in nerve cells to trigger electrical signals with millisecond precision using light. Since then, optogenetics has fundamentally transformed neuroscience in particular: specific types of nerve cells can be selectively activated or inhibited, allowing researchers to investigate their causal role in perception, movement, memory, emotions, and behavior.
To this day, optogenetics is primarily used in the neurosciences. However, its potential applications extend beyond that: Light-sensitive proteins are also increasingly being studied to specifically investigate and influence electrical and molecular processes in other cell types. For example, José-Alain Sahel (University of Pittsburgh, USA), together with colleagues, demonstrated that retinal cells made light-sensitive using an optogenetic technique were able to restore some visual perception in a blind patient. The versatility of optogenetics suggests that many more exciting advances are on the horizon.
About Peter Hegemann
Peter Hegemann is the Hertie Senior Research Professor of Neuroscience at the Institute of Biology at Humboldt University in Berlin. Hegemann completed his studies in chemistry at the University of Münster and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and earned his Ph.D. in 1984 at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried. In 1985, he went to Syracuse University in New York as a postdoctoral fellow, where he was already attempting to biochemically isolate the photoreceptor of the alga Chlamydomonas. After positions in Munich and Regensburg, he has been a professor of experimental biophysics at Humboldt University in Berlin since 2005. He has received numerous awards for his pioneering work in the field of optogenetics. As early as 2013, he received—along with the 2026 Nobel laureates Georg Nagel and Karl Deisseroth, as well as other colleagues—the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize; this was followed in 2021 by the Lasker Award, considered the most prestigious prize for biomedical research in the United States. In 2022, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University, along with Deisseroth and Prof. Dr. Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford.
Three groundbreaking works by Peter Hegemann: