We hail individual geniuses, but success in science comes through collaboration | Jeremy Farrar

This week's Nobel winners will have drawn on teams, often multinational, now threatened by Brexit

When we think of famous scientists, we think of Albert Einstein, perhaps Marie Curie or Francis Crick. More recently, there's Peter Higgs, known for the Higgs boson, Andre Geim for graphene or John O'Keefe for his work on the GPS systems in our brains. Though they span vastly different scientific disciplines, they all have one thing in common - they are all Nobel prize winners.

Nobel laureates give a human face to science, a discipline that can often seem anonymous to those who aren't directly involved. They are great figures in history whose discoveries have transformed our understanding of the universe and in many cases improved our lives in ways that cannot be overestimated.

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