"The laureates were selected for their groundbreaking research that has significantly advanced our understanding of the unusual properties of matter on an ultra-small scale, the basic circuitry of the human brain and the nature of quasars," the Kavli Prize Committee said in a statement.

The three $1 million prizes were awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Kavli Foundation, and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

The astrophysics prize was shared by Maarten Schmidt of the California Institute of Technology and Donald Lynden-Bell of Cambridge University for work on quasars, or active, bright centres of galaxies far away.

"During the 1960s Schmidt analysed the visible light spectra of quasars and used the results to explain just how distant these extraordinarily bright galaxies are, while Lynden-Bell demonstrated how they were powered by the collapse of material into massive black holes," the committee said.

The nanoscience prize went to Louis Brus of Columbia University and Sumio Iijima of Meijo University in Japan for their discoveries of super-small semiconductors, pushing forward research in the environment, energy and bio-medicine.

Pasko Rakic of the Yale University School of Medicine, Columbia University's Thomas Jessell and Sten Grillner, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, shared the neuroscience prize for research into how networks of cells in the brain and spinal cord are assembled and function.

Kavli, born in 1927, made his fortune with his Kavlico Corp, which built sensors used for flight control on military and civilian aircraft. It branched out into sensors on cars, including monitoring the mixture of air and fuel in engines.

He sold out in 2000 for $340 million and used the cash to fund research. The Kavli Prizes will be awarded every other year.