The Nobel Foundation said the work of all three of this year's physics laureates
was groundbreaking.
Without their research,
modern communications technology
including digital cameras and the internet might not exist.
Charles Kao was born in Shanghai
but worked in Britain
where in 1966 he developed the idea of transmitting light
over long distances using optical glass fibres.
Today these fibre cables carry much of the world's data
and telephony traffic.