This is Scientific Americans 62nd Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

The Nobel Assembly at Carolinsky Institute that has today decided to award the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to William

Caylin, Sir Peter Radcliffe, and Greg Semansa, for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt

to oxygen availability.

Thomas Perlman, Secretary of the Nobel Assembly,

shortly after 5.30 a.m. Eastern time.

Greg Samantha was born in 1956 in New York.

He performed his prize-winning studies

at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore

where he's still active.

Sir Peter Radcliffe was born in 1954 in Lancashire in the UK.

He performed his prize-winning studies at Oxford University and he's continuing to do his research at

Oxford University and he's also at the Francis Crick Institute in London and

William Caylin, born in 1957 in New York,

he performed his prize-winning studies

at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston where he's still active in his own lab.

Carolinska Institute researcher Randall Johnson studies the effects of low oxygen.

He explained the significance of the work of the new Nobel laureates.

This year's Nobel Prize is awarded for determining how oxygen levels are sensed by cells.

Oxygen is essential for life and is used by virtually all animal cells in order to convert food to usable energy.

However, the amount of oxygen available to cells, tissues, and animals themselves can vary greatly.

This prize is for three physician scientists who found the molecular switch that regulates

...