Günter Blobel

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1999

Award: "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell."

Medal, Cash & Philantrophy

Gunter Blobel was awarded approximately $1 million as the Nobel Prize. He transferred almost the entire amount to an account in Dresden, Germany. Initially, he donated several thousand dollars to restore an old Baroque church in Italy. The rest of the money was allocated to preserving and restoring Dresden, including the construction of a cathedral and a new synagogue. He also donated to an independent American group named Friends of Dresden. The group supported restoration of Dresden’s artistic legacy.

In 1945, Blobel had witnessed the bombing of Dresden. In an air raid, his 19-year-old beautiful eldest sister Ruth, was killed in a train in which she had been travelling.

Blobel wrote, "It was one of the great pleasures of my life to donate the entire sum of the Nobel Prize, in memory of my sister Ruth Blobel, to the restoration of Dresden."