Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, how does the Nobel Prize work? I mean, we hear about these prizes on the news constantly and they've been around forever. Where did they actually come from? Six Nobel Prizes are awarded each year in the areas of peace, chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and economics. The prizes are named after Alfred Noble, the inventor of dynamite, who created the prizes. In his will.
He donated a good portion of his estate to fund the prizes, decided who would judge the winners of each award, and also named the five prize categories. Economics was added during the nineties sixties. The Nobel Prizes are administered by the Nobel Foundation and are awarded in the fall after a rigorous selection. Says the list of winners in the different categories, especially physics and chemistry, is like a hall
of fame. For example, in physics, the winners include Albert Einstein, Neil's Bore, Robert Milliken, Louis Victor de Broglie Werner, Heisenberg, and so on. It's a pretty prestigious list. Today, each prize is valued at over a million dollars. The reason it's such a big deal is because of the size of the award and the fact that the award has been given since nineteen o one, long enough that everyone has heard about it. Do you have any ideas or
suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the house stuff works dot com home page.