Nobel
Prize laureates are to receive their awards Wednesday in lavish ceremonies in
two Scandinavian capitals.
Five awards - for physics, chemistry,
medicine, literature, and economics - are presented at a ceremony in Stockholm,
Sweden. The Nobel Peace Prize is given out at a ceremony on the same day in
Oslo, Norway.
This year's winners include two French researchers,
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, who in 1983 discovered the virus
that causes AIDS, physicists, Japanese Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa,
and American Yoichiro Nambu, who helped explain the behavior of the smallest
particles of matter, an
American
economist, Paul Krugman, who analyzed how economies of scale affect
international trade, and a Finnish diplomat, Marrti Ahtisaari, who helped end
fighting between in Indonesia's Aceh province in 2005.
Prize recipients
get a diploma, a medal, and a $1.2-million cash prize. The awards are
traditionally given out on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred
Nobel, the inventor and industrialist who created the prize endowments.
Some information for this report was provided by AP.