TOKYO (October 19, 2012)--Japan's Shinya Yamanaka shared $1.2 million with British researcher John Gurdon when the two were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine earlier this month, and now he is also getting a new washing machine.
Yamanaka joked that he was fixing his washing machine when he got the call form Oslo saying he had won the prize for his achievement in the induced pluripotent stem cell research, and has not had time to finish the repairs.
On Friday, Japan's science minister, Makiko Tanaka, said she has presented Yamanaka a gift certificate signed by 16 of her colleagues, each of whom chipped in $126, so his family can choose a new washing machine.
