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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, how

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Speaker 1: does the Nobel Prize work? I mean, we hear about

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Speaker 1: these prizes on the news constantly and they've been around forever.

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Speaker 1: Where did they actually come from? Six Nobel Prizes are

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Speaker 1: awarded each year in the areas of peace, chemistry, physics, medicine, literature,

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Speaker 1: and economics. The prizes are named after Alfred Noble, the

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Speaker 1: inventor of dynamite, who created the prizes. In his will.

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Speaker 1: He donated a good portion of his estate to fund

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Speaker 1: the prizes, decided who would judge the winners of each award,

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Speaker 1: and also named the five prize categories. Economics was added

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Speaker 1: during the nineties sixties. The Nobel Prizes are administered by

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Speaker 1: the Nobel Foundation and are awarded in the fall after

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Speaker 1: a rigorous selection. Says the list of winners in the

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Speaker 1: different categories, especially physics and chemistry, is like a hall

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Speaker 1: of fame. For example, in physics, the winners include Albert Einstein,

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Speaker 1: Neil's Bore, Robert Milliken, Louis Victor de Broglie Werner, Heisenberg,

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Speaker 1: and so on. It's a pretty prestigious list. Today, each

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Speaker 1: prize is valued at over a million dollars. The reason

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Speaker 1: it's such a big deal is because of the size

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Speaker 1: of the award and the fact that the award has

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Speaker 1: been given since nineteen o one, long enough that everyone

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Speaker 1: has heard about it. Do you have any ideas or

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Speaker 1: suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an

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Speaker 1: email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, go to

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check

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Speaker 1: out the brain stuff blog on the house stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com home page.