2009 Nobel laureates receive their prizes

STOCKHOLM. December 11. KAZINFORM Twelve laureates -- including five women -- of the 2009 Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel received their prizes on Thursday at a ceremony in the Stockholm Concert Hall in the capital of Sweden; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

Marcus Storch, chairman of the Board of the Nobel Foundation, extended a warm welcome in his address to the laureates and their families to the ceremony in honor of the laureates and their contributions to science and literature.

Storch said so far a total of 822 laureates have been awarded in a time span of 108 years.

"From the very beginning, the Nobel Prize attracted great attention around the world as the very first international prize --by virtue of a cosmopolitan key statement in the will of Alfred Nobel," said Storch, adding that the prize-awarding institutions have shown good flexibility within the framework of the Nobel disciplines in capturing important new trends.

All the 12 laureates this year attended the ceremony, and Nobel laureate in physics Professor Charles Kao from Hong Kong was the first one who received the prize from the hands of the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, together with co-winners Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith.

The three Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry are Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath, and the three Nobel Medicine Prize laureates are Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak; Kazinform cites Xinhua.

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