The scientist the jellyfish protein and the Nobel prize that got away

It is the ultimate story of what might have been. By Philip Sherwell in New York Douglas Prasher was preparing breakfast before leaving for work at a car dealership in Huntsville, Alabama, when he heard a report on the radio about this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry. The prestigious $1.4 million prize had just been awarded to three US-based scientists working with a jellyfish protein that glows in the dark and offers new prospects for cancer research. The news last week stunned Mr Prasher. For if life had worked out differently, he might also have ended up as a Nobel laureate rather than driving people to and from the Bill Penney Toyota dealership in the complementary shuttle. Mr Prasher is the biochemist who discovered the gene for the protein. But when his funds from the American Cancer Society ran out in the early 1990s,... [read full story]