11 Get Nobels, Including 2 UC Irvine Scientists

Seamus Heaney, who rose from a tiny farming community in Northern Ireland to become a giant in the world of poetry, was among 11 people awarded Nobel Prizes on Sunday.

Winners took home $1.1 million; co-winners split that amount. The prizes were created in 1895 by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

In a touching moment at the awards ceremony--held before 1,800 at the Stockholm Concert House--the young granddaughter of 77-year-old Frederick Reines gently hugged the frail-looking scientist around the legs as he stood to receive congratulations.

Reines of UC Irvine and Stanford University’s Martin Perl shared the Nobel physics prize for their research on the universe’s smallest particles.

F. Sherwood Rowland, also of UC Irvine, shared an award for research on ozone-layer depletion.

In his speech introducing literature prize winner Heaney, Swedish Academy member Oesten Sjoestrand emphasized the poet’s humble farming roots.

“But at the same time we meet in him a learned poet who, in the very microcosm of language, cultivates and reveals the Celtic, pre-Christian and Catholic literary heritage,” Sjoestrand said.