Nobel Prize 2009 Winners

I. Literature

Herta Müller (German)

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She is a German novelist, born in Romanian. She has been awarded for her poetic and prose writings. She writes about the hardships faced under Communist Romania, the history of the Germans in Banat, and the persecution of Romanian ethnic Germans by Stalinist Soviet occupying forces in Romania.

II. Physics

1. Charles Kao

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A Chinese physicist who proposed using fibre optics in telecommunications. He is also called the father of fibre optic communications

2. Willard Boyle

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He is a Canadian physicist who co-invented the charge-coupled device (CCDs) used in digitizing images (scanners, cameras etc use CCDs).

3. George Smith

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He is an American scientist who co-invented CCDs with Willard Boyle at Bell Labs in 1969.

III. Medicine

1. Elizabeth Blackburn:

Australia born American Scientist. She Conducted ground-breaking research on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and cell division that has provided a new line of inquiry into the chemical bases of life. She helped in discovery of a key enzyme, telomerase, which is necessary for chromosomes to make copies of themselves before cell division. This discovery will have lasting impact on cancer cure.

2. Carol W Greider

An Americam molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins University. She helped co-discover telomerase, an enzyme that maintains the length and integrity of telomeres.

3. Jack W. Szostak

London born Canadian A biologist and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He was awarded for his contributions to the field of genetics.

IV. Chemistry

1. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India, He is a structural biologist at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council located in Cambridge, England. He has Citizenship of United States.

2. Thomas A. Steitz

He is a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University in the USA

3. Ada E. Yonath

She is an Israeli crystallographer best known for her pioneering work on the structure of ribosome. She is the director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

V. Peace

Barack Obama

He is the current President of the USA. He was awarded for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.