Canadian Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize in literature

Alice Munro
Canadian Author Alice Munro has won the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature. She was photographed, above, during a 2009 appearance in Ireland.
PETER MORRISON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Canadian writer Alice Munro has won this year's Nobel Prize in literature.

The Swedish Academy, which selects Nobel literature winners, called her a "master of the contemporary short story."

Among Munro's short story collections cited by the Nobel committee are "Who Do You Think You Are?," "The Moons of Jupiter," Runaway," "The View from Castle Rock," and "Too Much Happiness," and "Dear Life." The collection "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage," became the basis of the film "Away from Her from 2006," directed by Sarah Polley.

Here's a look at the other achievements so far being honored by this year's Nobel Prizes, the $1.2 million awards handed out since 1901 by committees in Stockholm and Oslo.

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CHEMISTRY

The chemistry prize was given to three U.S.-based scientists for developing computer models that predict complex chemical reactions that can be used for tasks like creating new drugs. Their approach combined classical physics and quantum physics. The winners are Martin Karplus of the University of Strasbourg, France, and Harvard University; Michael Levitt of the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Arieh Warshel of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

PHYSICS

The physics prize was awarded for a theory about how subatomic particles get their mass. The theory made headlines last year when it was confirmed at the CERN laboratory in Geneva by the discovery of the elusive Higgs particle. The prize was shared by two men who proposed the theory independently of each other in 1964: Peter Higgs of Britain and Francois Englert of Belgium.

PHYSIOLOGY/MEDICINE

The medicine prize, the first of the 2013 awards, honored breakthroughs in understanding how key substances are moved around within a cell. That process happens through vesicles, tiny bubbles that deliver their cargo within a cell to the right place at the right time. Disturbances in the delivery system can lead to neurological diseases, diabetes or immunological disorders. The prize was shared by Americans James E. Rothman of Yale and St. Paul native Randy W. Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley; and German-American Dr. Thomas C. Sudhof of the Stanford University School of Medicine.

WHAT'S NEXT?

A Norwegian committee will announce the Nobel Peace Prize winner or winners on Friday. This year's Nobel season ends with the economics award on Monday.