This year's Nobel prizes offered unexpected emotions and surprised both scientists and politicians to a considerable degree. What exactly happened?

Nobel committees act independently from one another. However, there is a certain trend among the winners in 2009. First, most of the winners are either born in the U.S. or are naturalized Americans. Nothing surprising here (the best science for the last decade has been done in the U.S.), especially after the blatant attempt in 2007 most of the laureates to be European, which received a lot of criticism. Second, there are five ladies among the winners, and for the first time a women receives a Nobel Prize in economic science. Observers took this to be an encouraging sign that the centuries-old contempt for the fair sex in the scientific community has been left in the past.

Not so encouraging is that many of the laureates this year are more than 70-years-old. Nobel committees have been criticized for decades for their policy of rewarding inactive scientists. Over the last few years only the Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded to researchers, who are still working, for their discoveries from the recent past.

Read the following list of who the laureates are and why they have been awarded.

Medicine

The awards in this field have gone to Elizabeth Blackburn (born 1948) from the University of California, San Francisco, Carol Greider (b. 1961) from John Hopkins Medical School, and Jack Szostak (b. 1952) from Harvard Medical School. Each of them will receive one third of the prize (which amounts to 1.4 million dollars).

They receive recognition for the discovery of how chromosomes transcribe themselves without mistakes during the cell division, and how they enter the new cell without any damage. The key to this lies in the telomeres, which are regions of repetitive DNA at the end of the chromosome that act like caps, protecting the genetic code. Telomeres are synthesized by a special enzyme, called telomerase. The three Nobel laureates have discovered the unique structure of telomeres (Blackburn and Szostak in 1982), and identified the structure of the telomerase (Greider and Blackburn in 1985-1989).

Media has called them "the masters of light". This year awards received the discoverer of the optical fiber and those of the CCD sensors, devices that are the foundation of modern digital photography.

Dr. Charles Kao (b. 1933),who has worked for the English company Standard Telephones and Cables, was the first to prove that optical fibers can carry information (light) on a 100 kilometers distance. He receives one half of the prize. The other half is shared equally (each receives one fourth) between Willard Boyle and George Smith. The two have worked together in the famous Bell Laboratories, where they created the so called CCD technology. It allows cameras to convert light into electricity, thereby eliminating the need for photographic plate.

Chemistry

All functions in the organism are performed with the aid of proteins. DNA is nothing more than a code, based on which they are created. This happens in the special "cell factories" - the ribosomes.

For a long time it was unclear how exactly this process goes. If we now know it, it's because Ada Yonath (b. 1939) from the Weizmann Institute, Israel, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (b. 1952) from Cambridge University, England, and Thomas Steitz (b. 1940) from Yale Unversity, U.S, managed  by X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of the ribosome. Task deemed impossible by most of their colleagues during the past century.

After about 20 years of effort, however, the three laureates succeeded. Their discovery, for which all three share the prize, equally, is of great importance to medicine. Each cell has ribosomes and they are vital to her activity. At least because bacteria are also cells and their ribosomes are the prefect target for new antibiotics.

Economics

The laureates are Elinor Ostrom (b. 1933) from Indiana University, and Oliver Williamson (b. 1932) from the University of California, Berkeley. According to bookmakers, who organize the "Nobel betting", their chances of winning the prize were minimal.

Both economists have been honored for their research on the so called economic governance, which occurs within companies or households, therefore remains hidden. This area of economics is very important, but for many years was neglected. For example, Williamson proves that it's better for the economy, if companies regulate themselves, instead of being regulated from outside. A similar conclusion for other organizations reached Olstrom.

Literature

This year's laureate is the Romanian with German origin Herta Müller (b. 1953), "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." With yet another vague and pompous statement the Nobel committee in literature wants to say that Mrs. Müller has described well the suffering of the Romanian during the communism.

Peace

Winner is Barack Obama. It's not clear for what exactly. According to the five Norwegian parliamentarians, who award the prize, it's for his efforts to "strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation".

One detail - Obama was nominated a week and a half after he became President of the United States. It's obvious that at that time he hadn't made the efforts yet, for which he was nominated. Let alone for achievements. The opinion, which dominates even in those media that praised Obama, is that he does not deserve the award. At least not yet. Then why did the committee award it to him? Some say it's because the Norwegian parliamentarian committee considers Obama the perfect American president (unlike Reagan). Others think that this is the third anti-Bush award this century after those of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.