IT and plastics pioneers win Nobel prizes

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Three Russian and U.S. scientists and inventors have won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for their work in laying the foundations of information technology.

Americans Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa of Japan also won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discoveries that plastic can be made electrically conductive.

Each of the prestigious prizes is worth nearly $1 million this year.

The physicians paved the way for CD players, mobile telephones and computers, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced.

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Russia's Zhores Alferov and Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby, from the U.S., share one half of the prize for work on developing semi-conductors.

Their pioneering technology is used for ultra-fast computers and in satellite communications, cellular phones and bar code readers.

Kilby, of Texas Instruments, won the award for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit and as a co-inventor of the pocket calculator.

Alferov, of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, is the first Russian to win a Nobel prize since Mikhail Gorbachev won the peace prize in 1990.

The announcement follows the award of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine to three scientists whose research led to the development for treatments of Parkinson's disease and depression.

Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel's research on how brain cells transmit signals to each other resulted in a better understanding on how the brain functions and how neurological and psychiatric disorders may be better treated.

The awards committe said they had laid the groundwork for developing standard treatments for Parkinson's and contributed to the development of anti-depressants, such as Prozac.

Several Nobel prizes are being awarded this week. The winners of the prize for economics will be announced on Wednesday, and the literature prize will be announced on Thursday.

The weeks culminate on Friday with the announcement of the winner of the coveted peace prize, in Oslo, Norway.

The nominees include U.S. President Bill Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter for their wide-ranging peace efforts, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, for his efforts to resolve conflict in Northern Ireland, and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for their Balkan peace efforts.

The Nobel prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896.

The academy in this year's selections cited scientists for their work in a practical realm instead of more esoteric branches of physics such as sub-atomic particles and quantum physics like winners in the previous two years.

Herbert Kroemer is a German-born researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was cited as one of the early leaders in semi-conductor research.

Alferov, of the A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, is the first Russian to win a Nobel prize since Mikhail Gorbachev won the peace prize in 1990.

Alferov said the award was a tribute to Russian science and he was already toasting his achievement with sparkling wine.

"It is without doubt a symbol of international recognition of our Soviet and Russian physics," Alferov, 70, said from his research institute in Russia's second city of St Petersburg.

"We have already started to drink 'shampanskoye'," he said, referring to the sparkling wine popular in the former Soviet Union. "Of course I'm happy -- I've been involved in this field for about 40 years."

Alferov, who is a Communist deputy in the State Duma lower house of parliament, added that he saw Russia as a world leader in his branch of the science.

Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard and Eric Kandel's research on how brain cells transmit signals to each other resulted in a better understanding on how the brain functions and how neurological and psychiatric disorders may be better treated.

The awards committee said they had laid the groundwork for developing standard treatments for Parkinson's and contributed to the development of anti-depressants, such as Prozac.

Several Nobel prizes are being awarded this week. The winners of the prize for economics will be announced on Wednesday, and the literature prize will be announced on Thursday.

The weeks culminate on Friday with the announcement of the winner of the coveted peace prize, in Oslo, Norway.

The nominees include U.S. President Bill Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter for their wide-ranging peace efforts, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, for his efforts to resolve conflict in Northern Ireland, and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for their Balkan peace efforts.

The Nobel prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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