Neuroscience is already well represented in the list of Nobel Prize laureates, and it was recently announced that the 2004 prize for physiology or medicine has been awarded to Linda Buck and Richard Axel for unlocking the secrets of what the Nobel Assembly described as “the most enigmatic of our senses” — the sense of smell.

Buck was a senior postdoctoral fellow in Axel's laboratory in 1991 when the pair published their seminal paper on the discovery of a family of around 1,000 'odorant receptor' genes. They subsequently became competitors in the race to establish how these receptors are deployed in the detection of over 10,000 different odours — a research effort that gave rise to the concept of a combinatorial olfactory code, which was described by Axel as “the brain...essentially saying something like 'I'm seeing activity in positions 1, 15, and 54 of the olfactory bulb, which corresponds to odorant receptors 1, 15, and 54, so that must be jasmine'” (Times Online, UK, 4 October).

As well as exposing the workings of the olfactory system, this research has contributed substantially to our understanding of the link between olfaction and memory: “how very specific smells — a great red wine, the scent of a lover or even an unfresh clam — can remain embedded in the human brain for years, only to be triggered half a lifetime later by a similar smell” (Times Online). This phenomenon was famously illustrated in “Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance of Things Past, where the smell and taste of a single madeleine cake triggers a long string of memories” (Discovery Channel, USA, 4 October).

When asked what he planned to do next, Axel said: “I'm going to have a cup of coffee” (New York Times, 4 October).