BAR HARBOR, Maine (AP) – A co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine spent a summer studying at Bar Harbor’s Jackson Laboratory.

Fifty-seven-year-old Jack W. Szostak s one of three scientists who are receiving the prize for their work in researching chromosomes.

Szostak is a professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The Bangor Daily News says Szostak spent the summer of 1970 at the Jackson Lab studying genes associated with thyroid function. At the time, Szostak was an undergraduate student at Montreal’s McGill University.

Jackson Lab Assistant Professor Rick Maser says the work of Szostak and his colleagues addressed a set of fundamental questions about chromosomes.