Alan MacDiarmid was born in a Wairarapa farming town 73 years ago.
Yesterday he was awarded one of the most significant prizes handed out by humanity.
Professor MacDiarmid received the Nobel prize for chemistry jointly with two other researchers at a traditional ceremony in Stockholm.
The $2.2 million prize recognised the trio's discovery that plastics can conduct electricity, leading to an entirely new field of molecular electronics.
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden awarded the prize to Professor MacDiarmid at a ceremony watched by 2 billion television viewers.
"I'm scared I'll trip over my shoelaces," the scientist said later.
Born in Masterton, he grew up in Wellington and gained his bachelor's and master's of science with first-class honours from Victoria University.
He won a scholarship to Wisconsin University in the United States in 1950.
Professor MacDiarmid never returned to work in New Zealand because of limited career opportunities.
He lives with his family in Philadelphia, working at Pennsylvania University.
During the 1970s he started researching the way plastics change when treated with chemicals, in particular their ability to conduct electricity.
His work, along with the efforts of Japanese prizewinner Hideki Shirakawa and American Alan Heeger, opened the door to molecular electronics.
Simply put, molecular electronics is expected to make redundant the everyday silicon chip that drives computers.
Instead, tiny plastic chips could be developed with thousands of times the capacity of the silicon chip, as small and light as a wristwatch.
Professor MacDiarmid said at the prizegiving that he was proud to be a New Zealander and always regarded the country as home.
The harder he had worked, the "kinder life seemed to be," he said.
The Nobel peace prize went to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, aged 75, for his work for democracy and human rights across Asia, especially for his efforts to promote closer ties with North Korea.
In his acceptance speech at a ceremony in Oslo, Mr Kim praised Stalinist North Korea for easing Cold War tensions.
"I humbly pledge before you that ... I shall give the rest of my life to human rights and peace in my country and in the world, and to the reconciliation and cooperation of my people," he told an audience that included Norway's King Harald.
The prizes, created in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel - the inventor of dynamite - are each worth 9 million Swedish crowns ($2.2 million) this year.
The sciences, economics and literature prizes were awarded at the Stockholm ceremony, attended by 1800 people.
This year's choice of literature laureate, Chinese-born writer Gao Xingjian, angered the authorities in Beijing, who said the award had political motives. The Chinese Embassy in Stockholm declined to attend the ceremonies.
Gao, the first Chinese-born writer to win the accolade, left China after the Army massacred pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
His works have been banned in his homeland since 1986.
The medicine prize was awarded to Swede Arvid Carlsson, Austrian-born Eric Kandel, now a US citizen, and American Paul Greengard.
James Heckman and Daniel McFadden, both of the United States, are this year's economics laureates.
The work of the three physics laureates, Americans Jack Kilby and Herbert Kroemer and Russian Zhores Alferov, contributed to cellphone and computer technology.
- Staff reporter, agencies
A Nobel chimes for Kiwi genius
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