At a glance: 2014 Nobel Prize winners

New Delhi: Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories.The awards are given by Swedish and Norwegian committees in recognition of cultural or scientific advances. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honouring men and women for outstanding works in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economics.The foundations for the prize were laid in 1895 when Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize.The prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for excellent achievements in different fields.The awards will be presented on December 10, the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel, the man who had founded these awards.Here goes the complete list of winners of 2014 Nobel Prize from all six categories:Nobel Prize in PhysicsAn American and two Japanese scientists won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source, leading to the creation of modern LED light bulbs. Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and Japanese-born US citizen Shuji Nakamura won the prize for developing the blue light-emitting diode (LED) -- the missing piece that now allows manufacturers to produce white-light lamps.Isamu AkasakiBorn in 1929 Japan's Chiran, Isamu Akasaki did Ph.D (Doctorate of Engineering) from School of Engineering, Nagoya University in Japan in 1964.He had served as a Professor of School of Engineering at Nagoya University in 1981. In 1992, he took retirement from Nagoya University and joined Meijo University as a Professor. In 2004, he joined the Nagoya University as a distinguished professor.He has contributed in the discovery of nitride semiconductor p conduction and p-n junction blue luminescent device and achieved a high-quality nanostructure in nitride semiconductors and verifying the quantum effects.Hiroshi AmanoAmano was born in 1960 in Hamamatsu, Japan. He did Ph.D (Doctor of Engineering) in 1989 from Nagoya University in Japan.In 1988, he had joined the Nagoya University as a Research Associate and obtained the position of the Professor at the University in 2010.He has made his contribution in various fields like Light emitting diode, laser diode, high power and high frequency transistor, solar cells, nano structure, crystal growth of compound semiconductors and semiconductor device physics.Shuji NakamuraShuji was born in 1954 at Japan's Ikata. Shuji, now an American citizen, graduated from the University of Tokushima in 1977 with a degree in electronic engineering. He was awarded a Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Tokushima in 1994.He is a Japanese American professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara.Nakamura has worked on green LEDs and is responsible for creating the white LED and blue laser diodes used in Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs.Nobel Prize in ChemistryThe 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Eric Betzig of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Stefan W Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Germany) and William E Moerner of Stanford University for their work in overcoming the limitations of the traditional light microscope.Eric BetzigEric Betzig is a scientist based at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. He was educated at the California Institute of Technology in 1983 and Cornell University in 1985.Since 2005, he has been a Group Leader at Janelia Farm Research Campus and is developing new optical imaging technologies for biology.He did the PhD in 1988 from the Cornell University.Stefan W HellHell is a scientific member of the Max Planck Society and a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He currently leads the Department of NanoBiophotonics.From 1991 to 1993, he worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg.Hell received his diploma in 1987 and doctorate in physics in 1990 from the University of Heidelberg.He was appointed to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen in 1997 where he has built up his current research group dedicated to sub-diffraction-resolution microscopy.William E MoernerMoerner is an American physical chemist and chemical physicist with current work in the biophysics and imaging of single molecules. Moerner attended Washington University in St. Louis for undergraduate studies.From 1981 to 1988, Moerner worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California as a Research Staff Member.His Ph.D. thesis was on vibrational relaxation dynamics of an IR-laser-excited molecular impurity mode in alkali halide lattices.His current areas of research and interest are physical chemistry, chemical physics, biophysics, nanoparticle trapping, nanophotonics, photorefractive polymers and spectral hole-burning.Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineBritish-American John O'Keefe and Norwegians May-Britt and Edvard Moser won the 2014 Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the brain's navigation system and giving clues as to how strokes and Alzheimer's disrupt it.John O'KeefeBorn in 1939 in New York City, Keffe holds both American and British citizenships.Keefe is currently Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London.He received his doctoral degree in physiological psychology from McGill University, Canada in 1967. Later, he moved to England for postdoctoral training at University College London.He has remained at University College and was appointed Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in 1987.May-BrittBritt was born in Norway in 1963. She is a Norwegian citizen.At present, Britt is the Director of the Centre for Neural Computation in Trondheim.She studied psychology at the University of Oslo together with her future husband and co-Laureate Edvard Moser. She received her Ph.D. in neurophysiology in 1995.She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently a visiting scientist at University College London before moving to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in 1996.May-Britt Moser was appointed Professor of Neuroscience in 2000.Edvard MoserMoser was born in 1962 in Norway. Currently, he is the director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim.He obtained his Ph.D. in neurophysiology from the University of Oslo in 1995.He was a postdoctoral fellow together with his wife and co‐Laureate May‐Britt Moser, first at the University of Edinburgh and later a visiting scientist in John O´Keefe´s laboratory in London.In 1996 they moved to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, where Edvard Moser became Professor in 1998.Nobel Prize in LiteratureFrench writer Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for works that made him ‘a Marcel Proust of our time' with tales often set during the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II.Relatively unknown outside of France and a media recluse, Modiano's works have centred on memory, oblivion, identity and guilt. He has written novels, children's books and film scripts.His first novel 'La Place de l'Etoile', published in 1968, remains probably his best known book and touched on many themes that he would return to throughout his career, including the fate of the Jews under the Nazis.Little of his writing is available in English but his roughly 40 works include ‘A Trace of Malice', ‘Missing Person', and ‘Honeymoon'. His latest work is the novel ‘Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier'.Modiano, 69, was born in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt in July 1945, several months after the official end of the Nazi occupation in late 1944.His father was Jewish and his mother Flemish and non-Jewish. They met during the Occupation and that mixed heritage combined with moral questions about France's relations with Nazi forces have played an important role in his novels.Nobel Peace PrizeTwo activists from two rival countries... India and Pakistan share the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. India's Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai were named the joint winners of the eight-million kronor (USD 1.1 million) prize by the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee - Norway's former prime minister Thorbjoern Jagland.Kailash SatyarthiHe belongs to Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh. He was an electrical engineer who turned into an activist for children's rights at the age of 26. He gave up his job as an electrical engineer to dedicate himself to protecting and advancing child rights for over three decades now, freeing 80,000 child labourers and giving them new hope in life.In 1983, he founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) to fight child labour. His efforts have helped rescue thousands of children from bondage, trafficking and exploitative labour.It is largely due to his doggedness and zeal that NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan has emerged as by far the most prominent child rights group in the country even as 60-year-old Satyarthi rose to become a global voice for the children's cause.Several prestigious awards have been conferred on him, including Defenders of Democracy Award (2009-US), Medal of the Italian Senate (2007-Italy), Robert F Kennedy International Human Rights Award (USA) and Fredric Ebert International Human Rights Award (Germany) etc. He created the Global March against Child Labour, a movement that is active in many countries.Malala YousufzaiThe 17-year-old Pakistani girl child education campaigner was shot nearly-fatally in 2012 by a Taliban gunman. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago when she was on her way to school in a bus. A critically injured Malala was airlifted, at the Pakistan government expense, to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where she was treated for life-threatening injuries and pulled back from the brink.Malala is the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. Before Malala, Australia-born British citizen William Lawrence Bragg was the youngest Nobel laureate when he won the physics Nobel in 1915 at the age of 25.Nobel Prize for EconomicsFrench economist Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Economics for research on market power and regulation that has helped policy-makers understand how to deal with industries dominated by a few dominant companies.Jean Tirole is scientific director of the Institut d'Economie Industrielle, University of Social Sciences, Toulouse.Tirole, 61, works at the Toulouse School of Economics in France and has a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.From the mid-1980s, Tirole breathed new life into research on such market failures. His work has strong bearing on how governments deal with mergers or cartels and how they should regulate monopolies.It was the first economics prize without an American winner since 1999.