The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Charles Kao, of the Standard Telecommunications Laboratories, Harlow, UK, and Chinese University of Hong Kong "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication".

The other half of this year's award goes jointly to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith of Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA, "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor".

For more details about the winners, visit the Nobel Prize website.