The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences awarded the 1998 Nobel prize for economics to Amartya Sen. Sen's pioneering work in measuring poverty and inequality and probing the reasons for the economic famines in the Third World countries won him the esteemed pri2e. He became the sixth Indian to win a Nobel and the first Asian laureate in the field of economics.

Three US scientists whose discoveries led to the use of Viagra as an anti-impotence drug were conferred the Nobel prize for medicine. Robert Furchgott, Ferid Murad and Louis Ignarro got the award for their discoveries about the role of nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system. The Nobel prize for chemistry is shared by Walter Kohn and John A Pople for their work in the subject of quantum chemistry. Three US scientists, Robert B Laughlin, Horst L Stormer and Daniel T Tsui share the physics Nobel prize for their work on "frictional quantum Hall Effect".