Record 5 Women Collect Nobels

It's a history-making year among the Nobel Prize winners and not just because this year the first African-American US president was honored. A record five women were also among the 13 Nobel Prize recipients who gathered for the official ceremony in Stockholm Thursday, reports the Associated Press.

Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf handed out the awards in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and economics during a glitzy ceremony at concert hall. Hours earlier, as Tonic reported, President Barack Obama received the peace prize in Oslo. The prizes all come with a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million kronor ($1.4 million). The ceremony will wrap up with a banquet in Stockholm's city hall.

Only 40 women have won the Nobel in the award's more than 100-year history. As early as 1903, Marie Curie was the first woman to be honored in the physics category; then again in 1911 she landed the chemistry prize, setting quite a precedent.

This year, Elinor Ostrom, 76, made history as the first woman to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. She shares the award with fellow American Oliver Williamson for their work in economic governance.

Romanian-born writer Herta Mueller accepted the literature award for her depiction of life behind the Iron Curtain.

As Tonic reported in October, Americans Elizabeth H. Blackburn, 61, and Carol W. Greider, 48, shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Jack W. Szostak for their work in solving the mystery of how chromosomes protect themselves from degrading when cells divide. The team was praised for laying new groundwork in the fight against cancer.

The chemistry award was shared by 70-year-old Ada Yonath of Israel and Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz for their research, which is being used to develop new antibiotics.

American George E. Smith shared half of the physics award with Willard S. Boyle for inventing a sensor used in digital cameras. The other half of the prize went to Charles K. Kao, also from the U.S., for discovering how to transmit light signals long distances through hair-thin glass fibers.

The prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of their creator, Alfred Nobel in 1896.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.