51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

The US swept the board for Nobel prizes awarded this week.

John Mather of the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and George Smoot of the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of California, Berkeley, share the ?720,000 prize for physics for their role in helping to prove the big bang theory.

Andrew Fire of Stanford 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ and Craig Mello of the 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Massachusetts won the prize for medicine. Roger Kornberg of Stanford 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, who was a postdoctorate at Cambridge 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ in the 1970s, won the prize for chemistry.