Nobel laureates receive prizes

The 2010 Nobel laureates in literature, economics, physics and chemistry received their prizes from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at a gala ceremony in Stockholm last night (NZ time), AFP reported.

This year's medicine laureate Robert Edwards, the pioneer of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was too ill to attend and his wife Ruth collected the prize.

The formal event, held as tradition dictates on the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel in 1896, took place at Stockholm's Concert Hall which was decked out in 20,000 pink, red and purple flowers for the occasion.

The laureates and royal family were among about 1600 specially-invited guests, all clad in white tie dress for men and evening gowns for women.

While the 2009 Nobel season saw a record number of female laureates, no women got the award this year.

Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa, a giant of Latin American literature whose political ambitions saw him run for president of his native country, finally won the prize at age 74 after being pegged as a favourite for many years.

Edwards, the 85-year-old "father of the test-tube baby", got the award for work that has enabled millions of couples struggling with fertility problems to become parents.

The Physics Prize went to Russian-born researchers Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their groundbreaking work on graphene, a form of carbon touted as the wonder material of the 21st century.

Richard Heck of the United States and Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki of Japan won the Chemistry Prize for forging a tool kit to manipulate carbon atoms, paving the way for new drugs to fight cancer and for revolutionary plastics.

The Economics Prize went to three labour market experts - Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen of the United States and British-Cypriot Christopher Pissarides - whose work helped resolve puzzles such as why people remained unemployed despite a large number of job openings.

The Nobel prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million kronor (A$1.43 million) per discipline, which is shared in cases where there is more than one recipient.

The Stockholm ceremony was to be followed by a gala banquet and ball hosted by the king and queen for about 1300 invited guests.

- AFP