A five-minute primer on an issue making headlines
One seems to be given out almost every day! How many are there?
There are six prizes altogether - physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics. This year, there are two more to go: the economics winner is revealed tomorrow and a date for the literature prize hasn't been set.
So, what are the Nobel prizes?
They all started with Alfred Nobel, a Swedish engineer and the inventor of dynamite. When his brother Ludvig died, a newspaper ran Alfred's obituary by mistake, calling him a 'merchant of death'. Not wanting to be remembered solely as the man who pioneered explosives, he decided to use his legacy to reward annually those who had 'conferred the greatest benefit to mankind' the preceding year.
He must've left a lot of money.