AN Australian who drank a broth of bacteria to prove a theory on stomach ulcers joined nine other scientists to receive their Nobel prizes Saturday (Dec 10), with the literature winner absent for a second year in a row.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, received the Nobel prize for peace in Oslo earlier Saturday.

British playwright Harold Pinter was advised by doctors not to travel to Stockholm for the award and sent his publisher. His absence came after reclusive Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek, who has a social phobia, refused to attend the 2004 ceremony.

The 2005 laureates for medicine, physics, chemistry and economics were all present in Stockholm to get their prize from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf.

The winners included Barry Marshall, who shared the 2005 medicine award with fellow Australian Robin Warren.

Marshall became one of the most memorable Nobel prize winners for acting as his own human guinea pig to prove his theory that a bacterium caused stomach ulcers rather than stress, in the face of a disbelieving medical establishment.

He downed a brew which contained the Helicobacter pylori bacterium that he and Warren were sure caused stomach ulcers. The theory was proven when Marshall very soon became ill.

"It was slightly putrid," Marshall told a news conference this week, reliving the experience. The discovery meant ulcer sufferers could get cured after a simple course of antibiotics.

This year's prizes were announced in October, and the winners gave speeches at a gala dinner in the Blue Room of Stockholm's City Hall on Saturday night.

The Nobels, regarded as the world's most prestigious accolades in science and literature, have been awarded since 1901. The 2005 prizes are worth 10 million Swedish crowns (US$1.3 million) each and bring the winners instant fame.

Robert Aumann, the Israeli professor who shared the 2005 economics prize for game theory with American academic Thomas Schelling, said the money was not important in itself as none of the people who won it were really in need of it.

U.S. academics have dominated economics and the other science prizes in recent years, with 2005 being no exception.

Two of the three physics laureates, Roy Glauber and John Hall, are Americans, with the third, Theodor Haensch, being German. Frenchman Yves Chauvin joined U.S. scientists Robert Grubbs and Richard Schrock in sharing the chemistry prize.

Editor: Wing