Elizabeth Blackburn will receive the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
She shares the prize with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”
She’s USA-based but Australian-born and visits Australia quite often.
Details at the Nobel Prize site: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/press.html
We’ve written a couple of stories on her over the years including the following: when she won the Gruber Prize for Genetics in 2006 – http://www.scienceinpublic.com/2006/gruber/genetics.htm
And when she received a L’Oreal Laureate in 2008 at http://www.scienceinpublic.com/loreal/2008/elizabeth-blackburn
Both links include photographs and biographies.