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South African writer Coetzee, nine scientists receive Nobel Prizes

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 December 2003, 06:00 CST

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- An intensely private South African writer, scientists whose research has helped develop magnetic resonance imaging and researchers who uncovered secrets of human cells were honored Wednesday at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony.

Ten laureates received the prestigious awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics from King Carl XVI Gustaf, the Swedish monarch.

After the ceremony at Stockholm's concert hall, the laureates were to attend the traditional Nobel banquet with the royal family and a host of dignitaries.

Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi received the peace prize earlier Wednesday in Oslo. In his will, Alfred Nobel wanted the peace prize to be awarded in the Norwegian capital.

Each prize carries a cash award of 10 million kronor (nearly US$1.4 million).

A seating chart released Wednesday by the Nobel Foundation showed former U.S. Vice President Al Gore seated at the table of honor next to Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds. The 2000 presidential candidate had been invited by computer giant Cisco, which sponsors the Nobel Web site, company spokeswoman Paola Tich said.

J.M. Coetzee, 63, received the literature prize, the second South African to pick up the award after Nadine Gordimer, who won in 1991. Coetzee is a solitary figure, who rarely communicates with the media and prefers doing so by e-mail. He declined to show up to collect his two Booker prizes in Britain, but was in Stockholm to accept the Nobel, although he passed on the traditional news conference.

``Coetzee sees through the obscene poses and false pomp of history,'' Swedish Academy member Per Waestberg said when presenting the award.

``With intellectual honesty and density of feeling, in a prose of icy precision, you have unveiled the masks of our civilization and uncovered the topography of evil,'' Waestberg said.

Among Coetzee's novels are ``Disgrace,'' ``Life and Times of Michael K.,'' ``Waiting for the Barbarians'' and ``Age of Iron.''

American Paul C. Lauterbur and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield were selected for the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for discoveries leading to magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, the body-scanning technique that has revolutionized the detection of disease.

It was the most controversial among this year's science awards. An American researcher, Raymond Damadian, said he was unfairly left out and tried to sway the award committee with newspaper advertisements in both the United States and Sweden explaining why he should have won.

However, the secretive Nobel committee did not budge and said its reasoning might become clearer when the selection proceedings are made public -- in 2053.

The physics prize went to Alexei A. Abrikosov, of the United States and Russia, Anthony J. Leggett, of the United States and Britain, and Russia's Vitaly L. Ginzburg, for their work concerning two phenomena called superconductivity and superfluidity.

Superconductivity is the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance when they are chilled to extremely low temperatures. Superconducting magnets are used to produce powerful magnetic fields for MRI scans.

Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the chemistry prize for their studies of tiny transportation tunnels in human cell walls, work that could lead to greater understanding of diseases of the heart, kidneys, muscles and nervous system.

American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics for developing statistical tools that have improved the forecasting of economic growth, interest rates and stock prices.

The economics prize was introduced in 1968 and is funded by Sweden's central bank. The other awards are funded by the Nobel Foundation.

Ebadi won the peace prize for her work fighting for democracy and the rights of women and children.

The Nobel Prizes are usually announced in October and are handed out every year on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite. The first awards ceremony took place in 1901.

In his will, Nobel gave little guidance on selecting winners, stating only that the prizes should be given to those who ``shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.''

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On the Net:

http://www.nobel.se

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