This year's Nobel prize winners in literature, physics, chemistry, economics and medicine were awarded their prizes at a royal ceremony in the Stockholm Concert Hall on Monday (December 10).

While the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, the other Nobel prizes are handed out in Stockholm on the same day - December 10, the date dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel died.

This year's winners were nine men from five different countries.

French scientist Serge Haroche and American scientist David Wineland won the physics prize for finding ways to measure quantum particles without destroying them.

American scientists Robert Lef-kowitz and Brian Ko-bil-ka won the chemistry prize together for showing how cells in the body respond to stimuli such as a rush of adrenaline, work that is helping the development of more effective drugs.

Briton John Gurdon and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka won the medicine prize for work on creating stem cells, opening the door to new methods to diagnose and treat diseases.

China's Mo Yan won the Nobel prize for literature for his work which the awarding committee said has qualities of "hallucinatory realism".

And, Americans Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley won the economics prize for research into how to match different economic agents.