Stockholm: Two Japanese and a US scientist shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics, according to the prize committee on Tuesday.

Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa were named for the year's Nobel Laureates in Physics during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences here.

Japan-born US citizen Yoichiro Nambu of the Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago was awarded "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics", a press statement said.

Makoto Kobayashi of High Energy Accelerator Organisation (KEK) of Tsukuba Japan and Toshihide Maskawa of Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, Japan were recognised "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature".

Nobel Prizes are awarded annually in recognition of the achievements in science, peace, literature and economics. The prizes bearing the name of Alfred Nobel were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the 1895 will of the Swedish scientist. IANS