Three Americans -- David J Gross (University of California), H David Politzer (California Institute of Technology) and Frank Wilczeck (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on Tuesday won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for their work in the discovery and exploration of strong force and quarks.

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The research helped physics get one stop closer to the development of the grand unified theory, the foundation said.

The three were cited for their important theoretical discoveries "concerning the strong force, or the 'color force', as it is also called", the foundation said in its citation.