Scientists receive Nobel prize for unravelling secrets of smell

As winners of the 2004 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, Richard Axel and Linda Buck have a double claim to knowing more than most about the sweet smell of success. Cited by the Nobel Foundation “for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organisation of the olfactory system,” the two researchers have done much to explain the workings of this least understood sense.

To humans, smell has long been less than essential. But for many animals, high and low, it is central to their interpretation of the world. Yet until …