Romanian-born German Writer Herta Mueller won the Nobel Literature Prize and was honored for work that “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed,” the Swedish Academy said.

Reading about her in the NYT this morning, I was moved by her quote : “I’ve had to learn to live by writing, not the other way around. I wanted to live by the standards I dreamt of, it’s as simple as that. And writing was a way for me to voice what I could not actually live.”

And I am happy for these women who received such a recognition who a life of dedication to their “art”.

Earlier this week, U.S.-based researchers Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider were among the medicine winners and the chemistry prize included Israel’s Ada Yonath.

Dr. Yonath won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry Tuesday morning for mapping ribosomes, the protein-producing factories within cells, at the atomic level. “These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering,” the academy said in its announcement. Dr. Yonath shared the prize with American colleagues Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz.