Dubochet, Frank, Henderson Win 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

(Bloomberg) -- Jacques Dubochet from Switzerland, Joachim Frank from Germany and Richard Henderson from the U.K. were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The winners got the prize for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Wednesday.

The development “simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules," it said. "In the past few years, scientific literature has been filled with images of everything from proteins that cause antibiotic resistance, to the surface of the Zika virus."

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968. The total amount for each of the 2017 prizes is 9 million kronor ($1.1 million), up from 8 million kronor last year.