Nobel Prizes honor peacemaker, scientists who discovered AIDS virus

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Scientists who discovered the AIDS virus, an outspoken US economist and a Finnish diplomat who helped solve some of the world's thorniest conflicts are being honored Wednesday with the 2008 Nobel Prizes. Marrti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, will receive the coveted Nobel Peace Prize for decades of peace work, including a 2005 deal that ended fighting between the Indonesian government and rebels in Aceh province. The medicine prize jury cited French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1983. They shared the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. US economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect international trade patterns. The prize is not one of the original Nobels, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Nobel's memory.