Along with American researchers Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of restriction endonucleases. Their work would lead to the development of recombinant DNA technology.
Werner Arber is member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 1981. In 1981, Arber became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.
Letters from Daisy Dussoix in 1978 where she expresses her frustration about the lack of recognition of her research which led Werner Arber to obtain the Nobel prize Arber studied chemistry and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich from 1949 to 1953.