Armenia on Tuesday issued a postage stamp that honors San Diego’s Ardem Patapoutian, the Armenian American biologist who shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for helping discover cell receptors that enable people to sense heat, cold, pain, touch and sound.
Patapoutian traveled to Yerevan, the capitol of Armenia, for a ceremony showcasing the stamp, which features a drawing of the scientist’s face, with his Nobel Prize in the background. He is the first Armenian to win a Nobel.
He later took to Twitter to say, “Thank you #Armenia for shining a limelight on #science and honoring scientists. Yes! This is an actual stamp with my face on it, tweeps! I am trying to figure out how to process all this…”
Patapoutian later told the Union-Tribune by email: “It is pretty surreal! If anyone told 18-year-old me that my face would be on a stamp I would have felt mocked. This is very special to come from Armenia; as a kid I used to collect Armenian stamps!”
Armenian officials said the the stamp was printed by the French printing house Cartor, and that 20,000 of the stamps are expected to go into circulation.
Gary Robbins