The 2003 Nobel winners for Literature, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Economics were officially handed their awards in Stockholm by King Carl XVI Gustaf Wednesday.

The formal ceremony, traditionally held in Stockholm's Concert Hall, was to be followed by a gala banquet for 1,300 guests at city hall.

It came after the award of the Peace Prize across the border in Norway, the only prize traditionally given not in Stockholm, but in Oslo.

Robert F. Engle and Clive W.J.

Granger won the Economics Prize, the Chemistry prize went to Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon and the Physics prize was awarded to trio consisting of Alexei A. Abrikosov, Anthony J. Leggett and Vitaly L. Ginzburg.

Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield jointly won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

South African writer J.M. Coetzee was honoured with the Nobel Literature prize. After Coetzee won the prize in October, there had been some doubt whether the reclusive writer would make the journey, his first trip to Sweden.