By: Retave’s Research Desk Editor
In 1935, a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was made for a doctor born in Penang. His name was Dr Wu Lien-teh. W.W. Cadbury put him forward, and it’s the only nomination on record for him.
Ninety-one years on, Dr Wu remains a pioneer. In the nominee lists compiled from the Nobel Prize’s own archive, he’s the only person born in what’s now Malaysia whom RETAVE could find, and the wait for Malaysia’s first laureate continues with fresh hope.
Others may well have been nominated since, and their names will come to light as the Nobel archive opens.
Dr Wu Lien-teh, the Penang doctor who took on the plague
According to a profile by Kevin Y.L. Tan for the National Library of Singapore’s BiblioAsia journal, Dr Wu was born in Penang on 10 March 1879. He won the Queen’s Scholarship in 1896, at 17, and went on to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was the first Chinese student accepted at St Mary’s Hospital in London.
His defining moment came in late 1910, when he was sent to Harbin, China, to investigate a plague outbreak in Manchuria. He carried out a post-mortem, identified the plague bacterium, and pushed for isolation measures and face masks to protect people from infected droplets.
Professor Joseph Sung, dean of Nanyang Technological University’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, writes that an estimated 60,000 people died in seven months, and that Harbin had no more cases of pneumonic plague by 1 March 1911.
Dr Wu became director of the new North Manchurian Plague Prevention Service in 1912 and, in 1930, the first director of China’s National Quarantine Service. By January 1938, he was back in Malaya, in private practice at the Boon Pharmacy in Ipoh. He died in Penang on 21 January 1960.
Both BiblioAsia and Nanyang Technological University describe him as the first Malayan nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine.
The 50-year seal on Nobel nominations
The Nobel Prize’s nomination archive withholds nominees’ names for 50 years. For the Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Institute says it can never confirm or deny a nomination before the deadline.
The public archive covers the earlier decades. It runs to 1953 for medicine, 1974 for physics and chemistry, and 1975 for literature and peace, and the Nobel Prize notes that the database isn’t complete.
Two other rules apply. A nomination only counts when it comes from someone who meets the prize’s criteria, and a personal application won’t be considered.
Nominations from the last 50 years become public when someone involved chooses to share them.
Malaysians in the Nobel company
Two more Malaysians have stood close to the Nobel spotlight:
- Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Mohd Nasarudin Mohd Yusof was working at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague when it won the 2013 Peace Prize. “I did not win this award as an individual,” he’s quoted as saying (translated from Malay) in a 2020 commentary by Dr Ahmad Mahfuz Gazali, a senior lecturer at Universiti Malaysia Pahang.
- In October 2019, Dr Serena Nik-Zainal, a UK-based Malaysian scientist, won the Dr Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award at the University of Bern in Switzerland. One Malaysian headline described it as the “Nobel Prize for Cancer Research”. It is a separate award, given independently of the Nobel Prizes.
Malaysia’s next chapter
The goal of a first Malaysian laureate has inspired national leaders for decades. In 2020, then Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, speaking at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, challenged Malaysian universities to produce one, and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had set out the same ambition in a 1998 speech, Dr Ahmad Mahfuz writes.
Ninety-one years after Dr Wu’s nomination, the next chapter of his story could well begin in a Malaysian lab.
Further Reading
- 92 Nobel laureates, one region: every Asia-Pacific-born winner from Ronald Ross to Kenso Soai
- From the supermarket to Stockholm: Kenso Soai wins Asia-Pacific’s 2026 Nobel, and Japan makes it three years running
- Five Universities, RM18 Billion, and Malaysia’s Quiet Bet on Becoming a Research Nation.
Sources
- Ahmad Mahfuz Gazali. (2020, November 5). Pemenang Anugerah Nobel pertama dari Malaysia: Impian atau realiti? [Malaysia’s first Nobel laureate: Dream or reality?]. Universiti Malaysia Pahang. https://news.umpsa.edu.my/experts/pemenang-anugerah-nobel-pertama-dari-malaysia-impian-atau-realiti
- Malay Mail. (2019, October 20). Agong congratulates Malaysian scientist who won ‘Nobel Prize for Cancer Research’. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/10/20/agong-congratulates-malaysian-scientist-who-won-nobel-prize-for-cancer-rese/1802052
- Nobel Prize Outreach. (n.d.). Nomination archive. Retrieved October 12, 2026, from https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/
- Norwegian Nobel Institute. (n.d.). Nomination. The Nobel Peace Prize. Retrieved October 12, 2026, from https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination/
- Sung, J. (2023, February 9). A hero of infectious diseases: Wu Lien-teh. Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/medicine/news-events/dean’s-blog/a-hero-of-infectious-diseases-wu-lien-teh
- Tan, K. Y. L. (2020, July 7). The plague fighter: Dr Wu Lien-teh and his work. BiblioAsia, National Library Board Singapore. https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-16/issue-2/jul-sep-2020/plague/
- Wikipedia. (2026). List of nominees for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1930–1939). Retrieved October 12, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nominees_for_the_Nobel_Prize_in_Physiology_or_Medicine_(1930%E2%80%931939)
