Nobel Americans

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- The United States will carry out an invasion of Scandinavia in December when the Nobel prizes are formally awarded.

Nobel Prize committees in six categories made 13 new laureates in announcements in eight days and 11 of them are Americans or people who call the United States home. Maybe they can get charter rates when they travel to Sweden and Norway to collect the certificates, gold medals and $1.4 million checks.

The announcements started with three Americans splitting the prize in medicine and ended with U.S. President Barack Obama's stunning win of the Peace Prize and two U.S. academics winning the economics prize. Two U.S. scientists and a Shanghai-born researcher who lives in the United States were selected to take the physics prize and the chemistry award is going to a pair of Americans and an Israeli scientist.

The only prize to elude the Americans was in literature. That honor will go to Herta Mueller, a Romanian-born writer living in Germany. No American has won the Nobel Prize for Literature since Toni Morrison in 1993.

The Nobel Prize award ceremonies are scheduled for Dec. 10.