H. Robert Horvitz

Horvitz shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for identifying the genes that control programmed cell death in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, work that established the genetic machinery cells use to deliberately destroy themselves. That discovery turned out to be conserved across species, including humans, and gave medicine a new framework for understanding cancer, neurodegeneration and a range of other diseases in which cell death goes wrong. He continues his research as a professor at MIT.