The Nobel Prize – which will announce its 2010 winners from October 4 – went to only three Romanian-born so far. However, all three of them have pursued their professional careers elsewhere.

George Emil Palade (in picture, left) was the first Romanian to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1974 for his discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell. When Palade got the award, he was no longer living in Romania – he was affiliated with the School of Medicine of the Yale University. He got the award together with Albert Claude and Christian de Duve.

Read more about George Emil Palade in romania-insider.com's Famous Romanians article here.

Palade is still perceived as the only Romanian to have won the Nobel Prize, the other two coming from German and Israeli families who were living in Romania.

Elie Wiesel, (in picture, middle) the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986, was born in Sighet, Romania, in 1928. During World War II, he, with his family and other Jews from the area, were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps, where his parents and little sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist. He got the Nobel Prize for his humanitarian work and at the time he was working and living in the US, being chairman of 'The President's Commission on the Holocaust'. Wiesel has made his home in New York City and is now a United States citizen.

More recently, Romanian – born writer Herta Muller (in picture, right) has received the Nobel Prize for Literature. She received the award in 2009 for her “concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, that depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.”

Muller is currently a German citizen. She was born in a German – speaking village in Banat and studied Romanian and German literature in Timisoara. In 1979 she was approached by the Romanian secret police (Securitate), but she refused to spy on her colleagues and foreign guests, and as a result she lost her job and could only find occasional employment.

In the early 80s she published a couple of volumes which were censored in Romania but she became famous in Germany, where she started to publish her books. In 1987 she emigrated to Germany together with writer Richard Wagner, her husband at the time. Since then she has lived in Berlin. Muller continued to be persecuted and threatened by the Securitate (The Romanian secret police). Most of Muller's writing are inspired from the daily life during the communist dictatorship in Romania, the secret police and the deportation of Romanian-German minority.

Rear a review of  Herta Muller's book The Passport here and more about her recent trip and public events in Romania here.

About the Nobel Prize

Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1901 honoring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. The foundations for the prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize. Alfred Nobel was a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, author and pacifist. Nobel was fluent in several languages, and wrote poetry and drama. Nobel was also very interested in social and peace-related issues, and held views that were considered radical during his time.

The 2010 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine will be announced on Monday, October 4, followed by the one on Physics on October 5, Chemistry on October 6, Literature on October 7, Peace on October 8 and Economic Sciences on Monday, October 11 at the ceremonies in Stockholm.

Romania-insider.com