nobel prize

Six Nobel prizes are awarded each year in the areas of:

• Peace
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Medicine
• Literature
• Economics

The prizes are named after Alfred Nobel, 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 1960s).
The Nobel Prizes are administered by the Nobel Foundation and are awarded in the fall after a rigorous selection process. 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, Niels Bohr, Robert Millikan, Louis-Victor De Broglie, Werner Heisenberg and so on. It's a pretty prestigious list!
Today each prize is valued at over $1,000,000. The reason it is such a "big deal" is because of the size of the award and the fact that the award has been given since 1901-- long enough that everyone has heard about it.

Winners in Medicine:
2009
The prize was awarded jointly to:
ELIZABETH H. BLACKBURN, CAROL W. GREIDER, and JACK W. SZOSTAK for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.

2008 The prize was divided equally, one half to:
HARALD ZUR HAUSEN for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer
and the other half jointly to:
FRANCOISE BARRE SINOUSSI, and LUC MONTAGNIER for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus

2007 The prize was awarded jointly to:
MARIO R. CAPECCHI, SIR MARTIN J. EVANS, and OLIVER SMITHIES for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells

2006 The prize was awarded jointly to:
ANDREW Z. FIRE, and CRAIG C. MELLO for their discovery of RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA

2005 The prize was awarded jointly to:
BARRY J. MARSHALL, and J. ROBIN WARREN for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.