Stockholm - Three Americans have won the 2001 Nobel prize for economics for their analyses of how markets function when some people know more than others. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Prof George Akerlof (61), economics professor at University of California at Berkeley, and Dr Michael Spence (58), former dean of Harvard and Stanford universities, would share the prestigious $1 million prize with Prof Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics, business and international affairs at Columbia University.
Meanwhile, Dr William Knowles and Dr Barry Sharpless of the United States and Japan's Ryoji Noyori, won the 2001 Nobel prize in chemistry for research which leads to the creation of life-saving drugs. They share the prestigious $1 million prize for research used to produce pharmaceutical products such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs and heart medicines.
Prof Barry Sharpless (60), a chemistry professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, received half the prize for developing substances speeding up chemical reactions used in the production of heart medicines such as beta-blockers. Dr William Knowles (84) hails from the University of Columbia in St Louis, Missouri, and Japan's Dr Ryoji Noyori(63), works at Nagoya University in Japan.