He also notes that his prize-winning research was originally an investigation of the molecular identity of the human blood Rh factor, and his initial discovery of aquaporins was purely serendipitous.

But a French scientist, Dr. Dominique Stehelin, who was working in their laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow when the discoveries were made in the mid-1970's, asserts that he got the idea for the prize-winning research and carried out the experiments.

His prize-winning research established, to the surprise of most scientists, the existence of the tau lepton and showed that it had a mass 3,500 times that of the electron.

They determined how old each winner was when they completed their prize-winning research, creating a dataset of 525 Nobel Prize winners (182 in physics, 153 in chemistry, and 190 in medicine).

The prize-winning research has led to the discovery of more than 40 different genes that can cause cancer.

Indeed, taken together with China's recent launches of manned space flights, and the huge push to build world-class universities and to produce prize-winning scientific research, some have called the language initiative part of this country's "Sputnik moment," after the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.

Prize winners must be under 40 and must either be Swiss citizens or have conducted the prize-winning research in this country.

Doctors have learned from the prize-winning research that in heart disease, the endothelium, or inner lining of arteries, makes less nitric oxide.

Their prize-winning research was sparked by the paper Victor Emery and Andrew Sessler had written in 1960.

He had a position there that was the equivalent of an assistant professorship, Dr. Lodish said, and it was there that Dr. Tonegawa began his prize-winning research on the rearrangement of genes in cells of the immune system.