Nobel prize winners 2010

The statue of Alfred Nobel at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

The chairman of the Nobel committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, holds up a photograph of the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel prize for peace Photograph: Scanpix Norway/Reuters

Protesters demonstrate in Hong Kong today, demanding Liu Xiaobo's release Photograph: Bobby Yip/Reuters

An undated picture of Liu Xiaobo by his wife, Liu Xia Photograph: Liu Xia/handout/EPA

The winner of the 2010 Nobel prize for literature, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, photographed in London in 2007. The committee said Vargas Llosa received the award 'for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat' Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Guardian

6 October 2010: Reporters gather at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm for the announcement of the Nobel prize for chemistry
Photograph: Janerik Henriksson/AFP/Getty Images

6 October 2010: The Academy awards the Nobel prize for chemistry jointly to Richard Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for their pioneering technique for linking carbon atoms to build complex organic molecules, such as novel drugs. The Academy praised the trio's work in 'the development of palladium-catalysed cross coupling' Photograph: Janerik Henriksson/AFP/Getty Images

5 October 2010: Professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester were awarded the Nobel prize for physics. The Russian-born scientists shared the prize for work on the thinnest, strongest known material – a crystalline sheet of carbon one atom thick called graphene Photograph: Jon Super/AP

5 October 2010: An artist's impression released by the University of Manchester of a graphene sheet. The material has extraordinary properties that could transform electronic devices, from solar cells to computers and sensors Photograph: Jannik Meyer/AFP/Getty Images

4 October 2010: The Nobel assembly announces that Robert Edwards has won the Nobel prize for medicine, for the development of IVF Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP

12 July 2008: Professor Edwards with Lesley Brown and her daughter Louise, 30, who was the world's first IVF baby, and Louise's son Cameron Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

June 1990: Professor Edwards with the 2,500th test-tube baby, Robert Patrick Peter Laird Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA

The Nobel prize medal Photograph: Ted Spiegel/Corbis