Jules Hoffmann and Bruce Beutler jointly won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine with cell biologist Ralph Steinmann. Hoffmann is a French citizen native of Luxembourg, CNRS senior researcher emeritus and professor at the university of Strasbourg.

The CNRS press release:

Jules Hoffmann has dedicated his works to the study of genetic and molecular mechanisms responsible for innate immunity in insects. His numerous findings have provided new insights into the defense mechanisms that organisms, from the most primitive up to humans, use against infectious agents.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 was divided, one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann “for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity” and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman “for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity“.

Congratulations to them!

Portrait of Professor Jules A. Hoffmann.
Photo: Kindly provided by CNRS Photo Library/Pascal Disdier