The Siemens Westinghouse awards are among the nation's most prestigious science prizes, and range in value from $10,000 to $100,000.

The same kind of hard and sometimes arbitrary choices are also made for the other science prizes.

Cornelius recently won a regional science prize for a project on the variability of plant seeds.

It is Germany's most important science prize in zoology and includes prize money of 10,000 euros.

The spectator sport of Nobel watching, especially for the science prizes, is a fall tradition, and this season has been unusually lively.

But the honor, especially when considered alongside the other big science prizes - for medicine or physiology and for chemistry - was striking in another way.

In the late 1960s, he received the Brazilian Santista science prize.

The amount, like that of the science prizes, is set each winter and varies with the fortunes of the Nobel Foundation's investment portfolio.

In order to win a semifinal place in the highly competitive, prestigious annual science prize, high school students must submit original research projects.

"Usually the science prize is given many years after the discovery."