The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was received by three scientists - Alan Aspet (France), John Clauser (USA) and Anton Zeilinger (Austria), for research in the field of quantum mechanics.
The award was given "for experiments with entangled photons, the discovery of violations of Bell's inequalities, and pioneering work in quantum informatics."
Previously, the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology was awarded to the Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo for research on the genomes of extinct hominids and human evolution. He deciphered the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of modern man, and discovered a previously unknown species of hominids - the Denisovan man.