The Associated Press

Tue, Oct 7, 2008 (4 a.m.)

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that two Japanese citizens and an American share the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics.

American Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago, who was born in Japan, won half of the prize for the discovery of a mechanism called spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.

Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa share the other half of the prize for discovering the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.

The award, announced Tuesday, includes a 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) purse, a diploma and an invitation to the prize ceremonies in Stockholm on Dec. 10.

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