Americans, German win Nobel Physics Prize

The citation from the academy said they discovered that electrons acting together in strong magnetic fields can form new types of particles that carry charges that are fractions of electron charges.

Stoermer and Tsui made the discovery about electrons in 1982 in an experiment using extremely powerful magnetic fields and low temperatures.

Within a year Laughlin succeeded in explaining their result, showing that electrons in a powerful magnetic field can condense to form a kind of quantum fluid related to those occurring in superconductivity and liquid helium.

"What makes these fluids particularly important for researchers is that events in a drop of quantum fluid can afford more profound insights into the general inner structure and dynamics of matter," the academy said.

The citation said their work led to "yet another breakthrough in our understanding of quantum physics and to the development of new theoretical concepts of significance in many branches of modern physics."

On Monday, the Nobel Prize for medicine was given to three Americans -- Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad -- for their work on discovering properties of nitric oxide, a common air pollutant but also a life-saver because of its capacity to dilate blood vessels.

Furchgott, 82, is a pharmacologist at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn; Ignarro, 57, is at the University of California at Los Angeles; and Murad, 62, is at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.

Their finding helped lead to the discovery of the anti-impotence drug Viagra and could also pay off in new treatments for heart disease, cancer and septic shock.

The literature prize was awarded last Thursday to Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago. The economics prize winner is to be named on Wednesday and the peace prize on Friday.

All the prizes are announced in Stockholm, except for the peace prize which is given in Oslo, Norway. The prizes are presented on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who established the prizes in his will.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.