Three Americans win 2009 Nobel Prize for physics

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, all from the United States, on Tuesday.

Photos of three winners of the Nobel Prize in physics for 2009 are seen on a screen during an announcement ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, Oct. 6, 2009. Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith on Tuesday won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries of importance for the internet and data and telephone communications and the digital camera.(Xinhua/Wu Ping)

Kao was awarded "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," and Boyle and Smith were awarded "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit -- the CCD sensor," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Among the three, Kao is a Chinese-American who was born in Shanghai in 1933 and also holds British citizenship, while Boyle is a Canadian dual national.

The CCD is the digital camera's electronic eye. It revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film. CCD technology is also used in many medical applications, e.g. imaging the inside of the human body, both for diagnostics and for microsurgery as well as astronomy, said the Nobel Committee.