The Science Museums in Aarhus have received DKK 3 million for an exhibition about researcher and Nobel Laureate Jens Christian Skou. The exhibition will open on his 100th birthday in 2018.

2016.09.22 | Mette Louise Ohana

Aarhus already has a road named after him, Jens Christian Skous Vej, and in 2017 the Skou Building will open in the University Park. These will now be followed by an exhibition dedicated to Aarhus University’s Nobel Laureate, Jens Christian Skou. He will also become – as far as is known – the first Nobel Laureate in the world to have his or her own office exhibited in a museum.

National hero at the age of seventy-eight

Jens Christian Skou worked at Aarhus University for 65 years, and was the first researcher from Aarhus to be awarded the Nobel Prize. He discovered a "transport molecule" known as the sodium-potassium pump, a discovery that laid the foundations for our understanding of cellular function, which is now a major international research field.

"The exhibition will focus on the slightly nerdy aspect of life as a researcher, which often takes place far from the spotlight, but which is fundamental for modern science," explains curator Morten A. Skydsgaard. 

"Skou's career is a really good example of this kind of researcher life, which still took place in a little laboratory at Aarhus University. A perfectly ordinary research life like so many others. And then – all of a sudden – Skou was awarded the Nobel Prize as a 78-year-old pensioner in 1997 and became a national hero who was stopped in the street in Aarhus to write autographs."

It often starts with an offbeat idea

Dean of the Faculty of Health at Aarhus University, Allan Flyvbjerg, is enthusiastic about the project:

"Safeguarding the type of independent basic research that sometimes begins with an offbeat idea is very important. And there were many researchers who thought that Skou's idea was very offbeat, to say the least. An exhibition about Skou and life as a researcher can help us to understand just how tortuous, slow and uncertain good research can sometimes be. Skou's discovery, which was made more than fifty years ago, means that we can today explain and treat serious diseases in a completely different way," he says.

Dean at Science and Technology, Niels Christian Nielsen, is also looking forward to the exhibition:

"It is fantastic that we are able to honour a Danish researcher's ground-breaking work in this way," he says.

"The discovery of the cellular sodium-potassium pump has been of major international importance, both in relation to research and the possibility of attracting high-profile international senior researchers and establishing international partnerships."

 

Jens Christian Skou is today 97-years-old. He has been able to participate in the Steno Museum's documentation of his life's work. He had an office at the Department of Biomedicine until 2015, making it possible to reconstruct his office in its entirety in the coming exhibition. 

The press release has been received by the Science Museums. 

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Jens Christian Skou's discovery of the sodium-potassium pump

Jens Christian Skou discovered a fundamental building block in the living organism and its billions of cells. Each cell was shown to have a kind of "battery" located in the outer membrane of each cell. That is to say, a sophisticated transport molecule which carries electrical charges across a cell membrane. Twenty per cent of the energy that we ingest is used by this molecule. The molecule exists in all cells and works continuously to maintain the electrical potential of the cells, so that the heart can beat, the eye can sense light impulses, and the brain can carry out advanced calculations. Skou's discovery was absolutely fundamental to our understanding of life on Earth and the treatment of diseases.

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About the exhibition  

The exhibition has received DKK 3.2 million in support from the Lundbeck Foundation and the Povl M. Assens Foundation. It opens in 2018 at The Steno Museum and marks a hundred years since the birth of Jens Christian Skou and Aarhus University's first Nobel Laureate.

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Further information

Curator Morten Arnika Skydsgaard
The Science Museums - Steno Museum
Mobil: (+45) 2162 0511
Mail: skyd@sm.au.dk