Norwegian authorities were told that Ebadi's medal had been seized "within the last week or so" from a safe-deposit box in Iran along with personal effects including the diploma awarded with the medal, the Foreign Ministry said.

Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 along with two others, the Nobel Committee announced on Wednesday.

If Nobel judges are looking to improve the balance of women winning the chemistry prize, Israeli scientist Ada Yonath could be a strong candidate when the award is announced on Wednesday.

Americans Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak were named winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for research that has implications for cancer and aging research.

Leading British post-war playwright Harold Pinter has died, aged 78, his wife said on Thursday.