The Nobel Prize is a foundation that celebrates discoveries and excellence in a number of fields, such as Physics or Medicine. It draws its name from the famous Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhard Nobel. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 1933. Best known for his pioneer achievements in chemistry, he was also a skilled engineer, innovator and he owned Bosfors, an armament manufacturer. To show gratitude for his contribution, the chemical elite named the synthetic element nobelium after him. Alfred Nobel is most notorious for his invention of the dynamite. The irony of him instituting a Prize for Peace has escaped few.

In his last will, drafted a year before his death (in 1895, as he died on October 10th, 1896) Alfred Nobel laid the foundations for what has become the most prestigious science awards anywhere in the world – The Nobel Prizes and the Nobel Foundation itself. Immensely rich, he left the most of his estate and fortune to be used for the creation of his foundation. An innovative factor of the prizes is that they were to be awarded to the pioneers of scientific fields irrespective of their nationality. The exact categories the scientists are nominated for are as follows: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Literature and Peace.

Started in 1895, the Nobel Foundation started its course in 1901, after careful preparations. The process of electing the winners is long and rigorous, respecting the will of Alfred Nobel, who left precise instructions on how to conduct the election. Each category has an assigned committee. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences elects five members who will constitute the committees for the prizes in Chemistry, Physics and Economics. The committee for Literature is formed by four or five members from the Swedish Academy. For the Prize in Physiology/Medicine, the Karolinska Istitutet elects 50 members to form the Nobel Assembly, which in turn elects a committee of five members. For the Peace Prize, the Norwegian Parliament elects five members to form the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The strenuous process is just one of the many actors that make the Nobel Prize the most prominent award one may get in the field they activate in.

Three thousand people (governors, rectors etc) are then sent invitations to nominate candidates. The nominations are classified for fifty years, so one may never find out that they were nominated for the Nobel Prize. Experts select about fifteen names from the list of nominees, and the appropriate committees choose the winners. All awarding ceremonies are held in Stockholm, except for that of the Peace Prize, which takes place in Oslo, as Norway was a part of Sweden when Alfred Nobel passed away. The grant is of 10 million kroners, and a maximum of three nominees and two works can win a prize for the same category. The money is split in half, when there are two winners. If there are three, one can get half and the other two a quarter each, or the prize can be split among them in three equal parts. The winners receive a diploma, a gold medal and the grant itself.

In the 2008 edition, three scientists shared the prize in Physics. The rarity has occurred again, this time in the field of Chemistry. The Three - one Japanese and two American, namely Osamu Shimomura – emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Boston University Medical School, Martin Chalfie – Columbia University and Roger Tsien – University of California, San Diego, were all declared winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The three scientists were able to take the ability of a certain type of jellyfish to glow green, and then use the ability as a tool to monitor the movement of cells and their affiliated proteins. The winners will equally share the prize, estimated at over $1.4 million.