The Nobel physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and includes a prize sum totalling 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) that is shared among the winners if there are several, as is often the case.
The Nobel Prizes were established through the will of Alfred Nobel, who amassed a fortune from his invention of dynamite. Since 1901, with occaPhysics was the first category mentioned in Nobel's will, likely reflecting the prominence of the field during his time. Today, the Nobel Prize in Physics remains widely regarded as the most prestigious award in the discipline.
Past winners of the Nobel physics prize include some of the most influential figures in the history of science, such as Albert Einstein, Pierre and Marie Curie, Max Planck and Niels Bohr, himself a pioneer of quantum theory.