In 1895, Alfred Nobel’s will was the cornerstone of the Nobel Prize: one of the wishes written in by the famous Swedish chemist in his last will was instituting the Prizes, with the help of his immense fortune.

The chemist is probably most famous for inventing dynamite. The award categories are Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Physics (since 1901) and an associated prize in Economy. They are considered to be the most prominent awards in the aforementioned fields. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in the Awarding ceremony from Oslo, Norway, on the 10th of December – the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death -, while the other Prizes are formally given on the same day, but in Stockholm, Sweden. The reason for the different awarding locations is that Norway was a part of Sweden in 1986, the year of Nobel’s death.

The importance of the prizes is also given by the long, strenuous electing process. Each category has its designated committee, who choose the winners from among thousands of nominees. In short, the prizes in Chemistry, Physics and Economics benefit from the expertise of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

For the Physiology/Medicine Prize, the Karolinska Institutet elects 50 members, who form the Nobel Assembly and who, in turn, elect the final 5 members of the committee. The 5 members of the Peace Prize committee are elected, however, by the Norwegian Parliament. The arduous features of the process are kept as they were mentioned as crucial in Alfred Nobel’s will.

Each award can be given to as many as three candidates, and can be shared between a maximum of two works. An award is comprised of three elements, and thus a laureate receives a diploma, a medal and the payment confirmation. Currently, the Nobel grant is worth a little over $1.5 million. The grant is divided equally between two laureates – if two candidates win the same award. In case three laureates share a prize, the money can be divided either in three equal parts, either in one half for a laureate and a quarter for each of the other two.

Although such cases are rare, the 2008 edition of the Nobel Prizes held just such an irregularity. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three laureates, an American and two Japanese physicists. They were awarded the Physics Prize for exploring the hidden symmetries between the deepest constituting elements of nature – elementary particles. Chicago- based Yoichiro Nambu will be granted half of the award's sum – 5 million kroners, while Makoto Kobayashi (KEK Tsukuba, Japan) and Toshidide Maskawa (YITP, Kyoto University) will split the other half. Symmetries and constants have been a focal point for scientists since the age of Galileo. The epitome of their curiosity is undoubtedly the notorious LHC at CERN.