DOMINANT ANGLE
Belgrade remembers the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the portrait of a Stanford laureate interrupting congratulations to prepare his children's snack, more than the medical scope of optogenetics.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday, October 5, to Karl Deisseroth (54, Stanford), Peter Hegemann (71, Humboldt), and Georg Nagel (73, Wurtzbourg) for optogenetics.
- 02
The award is 12 million Swedish crowns, approximately $1.2 million, shared among the three laureates (Beta).
- 03
According to the AP dispatch picked up by N1, Politika, and Beta, Deisseroth received the call from Stockholm after reading papers on Sunday evening and had prepared his children's school snack.
ANALYSIS
Belgrade, October 6, 2026. Serbian media covered the Nobel Prize in medicine in two stages. On Monday, October 5, Beta announced that the prize went to Karl Deisseroth (54 years old), Peter Hegemann (71 years old), and Georg Nagel (73 years old), "for research on light-controlled ion channels" and for the development of optogenetics. The first works at Stanford University in California, the second at Humboldt University in Berlin, and the third in Wurtzbourg. Beta recalled that the Nobel Committee judged their method "used today in laboratories around the world to uncover the mysteries of the brain".
The next day, Tuesday, October 6, N1 Serbia, Politika, and Beta published the same dispatch from the AP agency, under the title "The new Nobel laureate interrupted congratulations to prepare his children's snack". The text described Deisseroth, who calls himself a "night owl", re-reading papers and responding to emails from his students on Sunday evening, before being called from Stockholm. "I was almost speechless," he told AP, before regaining his composure after a minute or two and not going back to bed.
The dispatch lingered on the details of the night. An AP photographer arrived around 3:30 am in front of the Stanford home, where Halloween decorations adorned the entrance and only one lamp was lit. He feared he had gotten the wrong address. Dr. Michelle Monje-Deisseroth, the laureate's wife, a researcher at HHMI and a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Stanford, opened the door. Her husband, sitting on the couch, received congratulations. She prepared coffee for the Stanford communications team that had arrived on the scene.
Scientific explanations remained brief in these articles. Optogenetics was defined as a discipline that "combines light and genes to activate or deactivate neurons in a living brain". The two German researchers appeared as "two researchers from Germany" with whom Deisseroth shared the award. Beta specified that the prize money was 12 million Swedish crowns, approximately $1.2 million, and that Nobel Week continued with physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, and peace on Friday, followed by economics the following Monday.
Politika published the text in Cyrillic and N1 in Latin, reflecting the practice of using both alphabets in Serbia. None of the three media outlets signed a local commentary: neither a Serbian expert, nor a reaction from a university in Belgrade or Novi Sad, nor a link to national research. The coverage remained that of an international news item relayed without a specific investigation.
