Stockholm  - The 2008 Nobel laureates are being kept busy with lectures, news conferences and receptions in the run-up to Wednesday's award ceremony in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.

German researcher Harald zur Hausen of the University of Dusseldorf, awarded for discovering the human papilloma virus which causes cervical cancer, Monday met with students at the German School in Stockholm.

On Sunday, he and co-medicine laureates Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of France, who discovered the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, delivered their Nobel lectures.

True to tradition, the award ceremonies are held December 10, the anniversary of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel's 1896 death in San Remo, Italy.

Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, endowed the prizes worth 10 million kronor (1.2 million dollars).

The peace prize, this year to be awarded to former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is always presented in Oslo, Norway.

During their stay in Stockholm, laureates are invited to embassy receptions and other functions and also visit the Nobel Museum housed in the same building as the Swedish Academy, the body that selects the literature prize winner.

French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, winner of the 2008 literature prize, on Sunday gave his lecture at The Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy's headquarters.

In his lecture titled "In the forest of paradoxes," Le Clezio discussed the necessity of literature and writing, saying that "language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity."

He also presented a defence for books, stating that "the book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate."

US-based researchers - Osamu Shimomura of Japan and US citizens Martin Chalfie and Roger Y Tsien - who won the chemistry prize for work on developing a key tool used for tagging bioscience processes lectured on Monday.

The physics prize was shared by US researcher Yoichiro Nambu and his Japanese colleagues Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa. They have described the smallest building blocks in nature and nature's order within the framework of spontaneous broken symmetry.

Nambu, 87, was not to attend the ceremony in Stockholm, Nobel Foundation director Michael Sohlman said last week.

The Nobel Foundation manages the assets of Nobel.

US economist Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 economic sciences prize - a prize not endowed by Nobel and awarded since 1968 - told reporters Sunday he was not sure what to do with the prize money.

In his remarks he also doubted the long-term viability of the US car industry but said in the short-term it was necessary to support the sector. (dpa)