The Nobel Prizes have recently been announced. In fact, all of them have been announced and will be awarded to the recipients in December.

Alfred Nobel was a prolific inventor, most famous for inventing his patent on dynamite. All those inventions made him a rich man and when he died his will stated that his fortune would go to creating the Nobel Prizes. The prizes, as they are today, include the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Nobel Prize in Chemisty, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and finally, the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Peace Prize is the only prize of the five to be determined by a committee in Norway. The prize is also awarded in Norway, being the only one of the five to not be awarded in Stockholm at Stadshuset.

The awards were first handed out in 1901 and are awarded every year in December, although the announcements come a bit earlier (obviously). During various years of war (WWII for example), no Nobel Prizes were awarded.

In 1969, the Nobel Prize for Economics was first awarded. The Prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, but instead is sponsored by the central bank of Sweden and is officially (in English at least) known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Despite this, the award is placed alongside the other prizes in being announced and awarded..

Below, you will find this year’s award winners, including a short quotation about their win from the NobelPrize.org website at Nobel Prizes 2012:

Physics: Serge Haroche (Nationality: French) and David J. Wineland (Nationality: American) “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.”

Chemistry: Robert J. Lefkowitz (Nationality: American) and Brian K. Kobilka (Nationality: American) “for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors.”

Physiology or Medicine: Sir John B. Gurdon (Natioality: British) and Shinya Yamanaka (Nationality: Japanese) “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.”

Literature: Mo Yan (Nationality: Chinese) “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.”

Peace: European Union (EU) (Nationality: European. Duh.) “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

Economics: Alvin E. Roth (Nationality: American) and Lloyd S. Shapley (Nationality: American) “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.”

For more information, check out the Nobel Prize website at www.nobelprize.org.