Together with César Milstein and Niels Kaj Jerne, Köhler won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984, "for work on the immune system and the production of monoclonal antibodies".

Köhler continued his collaboration on the technique when he returned to Basel Institute for Immunology in April 1974.

[2] Köhler remained at the Basel Institute for another nine years, during which time he continued investigating antibody diversity and in the early 1980s began working on the development of transgenic mice as a tool to understand the mechanism that underlies self-tolerance.

[5] Köhler's father, Karl, was a German, while his mother, Raymonde, belonged to a French family.

Most of the time he spent with his children while driving a small tractor on roads and enjoying roller-skating in streets.