The Medal for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

A portrait of Alfred Nobel is on one side of the medal for each prize. The opposite face is uniquely relevant to the discipline for which each prize is awarded. This medal depicts the “genius of medicine” represented as a woman seated with an open book on her lap. The woman is filling a bowl of water from a spring to relieve a suffering girl’s thirst. There is a Latin inscription above: “Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes” (“Invention enhances life, which is beautified through art”) cited from Virgil’s Aeneid. The name of the laureate is engraved on the plate below the figure, in this case Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. The lower text “REG. UNIVERSITAS MED. CHIR. CARO.” designates the Royal Caroline Institute (Karolinska Institutet). Reproduced with permission of the Nobel Foundation. © ® The Nobel Foundation.