Noble Prize is the pinnacle of achievement in any field. In 2015, a scientist from Duke and one from UNC-Chapel Hill shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with a Swedish scientist. They have got awarded for their work on DNA repair, which they did separately. DNA repair is something that have studied and advanced for years, and is a field that holds so much and could someday lead toward cell repair for cancer treatment.

Paul Modrich, a 69-year-old scientist from Duke, Aziz Sancar, a 69-year-old scientist from UNC-Chapel Hill and Tomas Lindahl, a 77-year-old scientist Sweden have worked in a world, that only a few have been able to understood. But they managed to understand it. The research done by the three will one day make the lives of humankind better.

A US-Turkish national Sancar, while sharing his excitement with his country, said, “Yes, they’ve (Turkish friends) been asking over the years and I was tired of hearing, ‘When are you going to get the Nobel Prize?’ so I’m glad for my country as well”.

Modrich was on a vacation in New Hampshire and didn’t bother to grab the spotlight. His assistant at Duke mentioned that all the lab workers were excited.

While talking about the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that the work done by the three has given fundamental knowledge regarding how a living cell works and is, for example used to develop new cancer treatments.

For his part, Modrich, vacationing in New Hampshire, didn’t care to grab the spotlight. His assistant at Duke said that all the lab workers were thrilled and that, “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”