The Canadian poet and classicist was in Iceland listening to the wind when the Swedish Academy called to award her the world's top literary prize.
The French and Japanese scientists have been honoured for explaining why life's building blocks only use one "handedness" of a molecule.
The physicist was honoured by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his work detecting high-energy cosmic neutrinos.
The three scientists won the prize for developing optogenetics, as anticipation builds for the physics and chemistry announcements later this week.
