Nobel prize kicks off with medicine award
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-10-03 16:17

The 2005 Nobel prize season opens on Monday with the prize for medicine kicking off the annual series of prestigious awards, with the greatest excitement reserved for the coveted honours for peace and for literature.

The 2005 Nobel prize season opens with the prize for medicine kicking off the annual series of prestigious awards, with the greatest excitement reserved for the coveted honours for peace and for literature. Picture shows Richard Axel (L), last year's joint winner of the prize for medicine receiving his award. [AFP/file]

The medicine, or physiology, prize, which last year rewarded work on the human sense of smell, is to be awarded around 11.30 am (0930 GMT).

It will be followed on Tuesday and Wednesday by the physics and chemistry prizes, which last year went to scientists working on quarks and the breakdown of proteins, respectively.

Few bother to speculate on possible winners in these fields, but there are no prizes for tipping the United States as the home for most of the science laureates thanks to unrivalled funding for research at US universities and institutes.

For the Nobel peace prize, awarded on Friday in Oslo, the list of possible laureates is a patchwork of names, featuring Irish U2 rock star Bono, former US secretary of state Colin Powell and non-governmental organization Oxfam.

But many feel that this year's prize will go to a person or group working to halt nuclear proliferation.

Last year, the Peace prize went to Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the award, for a tree-planting project in Africa.

The literature prize is traditionally awarded on a Thursday, although the actual date is only announced 48 hours in advance.

For decades, it has gone to fiction writers and poets, but some say it could be time to stray back into a different genre, possibly honouring a writer mixing fiction and non-fiction.

Last year, the prize went to controversial and reclusive Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek.

On October 10, it will be the turn of the economics prize.

Nobel prizes, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, were first awarded in 1901.

Laureates receive a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (1.3 million dollars, 1.1 million euros) which can be split between up to three winners per prize.

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