Nobel Prizes To Be Awarded Sunday

Six American scientists, a Turkish writer and a Bangladeshi activist for the poor will receive the prestigious Nobel Prizes at twin award ceremonies Sunday in Stockholm and Oslo.

This year's awards, which were announced in October, honor findings that cemented the big-bang theory of the universe, broke new ground in genetic research and explored the relationship between inflation and unemployment.

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk won the literature prize for a body of work that illustrates the struggle to find a balance between East and West. The Nobel Peace Prize went to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded to help the poor in Bangladesh through tiny loans, known as microcredit.

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden will present the prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and economics with pomp and royal ceremony at Stockholm's blue-hued concert hall.

In Oslo, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee will hand the peace prize to Yunus and a representative of the Grameen Bank at a gala ceremony, followed by a torchlight parade and a banquet.

The dual award ceremonies were stipulated in the will of prize founder Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite. The Nobel Prizes are presented each year on Dec. 10 to mark the anniversary of his death in 1896.

Each award carries a purse of 10 million (euro1.1 million; US$1.4 million), a diploma and a gold medal. The first prizes were handed out in 1901.

U.S. researchers have long dominated the science awards, and swept them all this year for the first time since 1983.

The Nobel Prize in medicine went to Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes. John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the physics prize for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was created.

Roger D. Kornberg won the prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins, a process that could provide insight into defeating cancer and advancing stem cell research.

Economics winner Edmund S. Phelps was cited for research into the relationship between inflation and unemployment, giving governments better tools to formulate economic policy. The economics award is not an original Nobel Prize, but was created by the Bank of Sweden in 1968.

Istanbul-native Pamuk, whose recent trial for "insulting Turkishness" made headlines worldwide, was honored for exploring "new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures." His novels include "Snow" and "My Name Is Red."

The awards ceremony at Stockholm's concert hall will be followed by a lavish banquet a few blocks away at City Hall.

Hundreds of guests, including Sweden's royal family, government officials, ambassadors, scientists and business leaders, were invited to the Stockholm dinner, which will be broadcast live on Swedish television.

Norwegian royals and other dignitaries were invited to attend the peace prize ceremony in Oslo.