This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine has been won by three scientists from the United States and Australia.

Elizabeth Blackburn, who has dual Australian and US citizenship, and Americans Carol Greider and Jack Szostak received the award for their discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.

The Nobel Prize for Medicine is traditionally the first of the Nobel prizes to be awarded. In the coming days, it will be followed by the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry and literature. The Nobel Peace Prize, the last in the series, will be awarded on Friday. Each of the Nobel prizes includes a cash prize of nearly one million euros.