IMAGES: Meet the Nobel Laureates of 2010

Nobel Prize laureates (front row) attend the 2010 Nobel Prize ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, on Friday.

Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize, an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economic sciences and for peace.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

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Russian-born physicist Andre Geim bows after receiving the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Concert Hall in Stockholm on Friday.

Geim, a Dutch citizen and fellow scientist Konstantin Novoselov, a dual British-Russian citizen, of the University of Manchester in England shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing how carbon just one atom thick behaved, a discovery with profound implications from quantum physics to consumer electronics.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

Konstantin Novoselov of Russia bows after receiving the prize for Physics during the 2010 Nobel Prize ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, on Friday.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru (left) receives the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

Llosa received the most prestigious award in the world 'for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.'

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

American scientist Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi of Japan and his compatriot Akira Suzuki (left to right), winners of 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry attend the award ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Heck, Negishi and Suzuki for 'palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.'

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

Peter Arthur Diamond of the US (left) receives the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Concert Hall in Stockholm on Friday.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2010 was awarded to Peter A Diamond, Dale T Mortensen and Christopher A Pissarides 'for their analysis of markets with search frictions.'

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

Dale T Mortensen of the United States (left) receives the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Concert Hall in Stockholm on Friday.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

British-Cypriot Christopher Pissarides poses after receiving the joint 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences at the Concert Hall in Stockholm on Friday.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

Ruth Fowler Edwards (left) accepts the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on behalf of her husband Robert G Edwards of Britain from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf (R) at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Edwards for the development of in vitro fertilization.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters

Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Thorbjoern Jagland looks down at the Nobel certificate and medal on the empty chair where this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo would have sat, as a portrait of Liu is seen in the background, during the ceremony at Oslo City Hall.

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in an Oslo ceremony derided by Beijing as a farce, and dedicated it from his prison cell to the 'ost souls' of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Photograph: Reuters

The overhead view of the 2010 Nobel Prize ceremony at the Concert Hall in Stockholm on Friday. Nobel laureates are seated in front to the left and Sweden's royal family is seated in front to the right.

Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters