How to win a Nobel prize?

Winning a Nobel prize makes you the most honorable individual on the planet and can fetch you a big amount of money (USD1.5 million up to date and getting higher each year). If you want to be part of it, here's how.

Do something useful
You're more likely to get the nod if you can actually offer some evidence that your work actually matters. For example; global warming is big news at the moment so solving climate change or the forthcoming energy crisis should score you a few points. Incurable diseases are always a popular area.

Move to the U.S. and, if necessary, have a sex change
Statistic shows that you stand a better higher chance of of winning if you're an American. And a man. Prior to 2006, 758 individuals and 18 organizations have been honored by the Nobel Foundation and almost 300 of those recipients have been American. For women though the figures look even worse. There had been just 33 female winners since 1901.

Be a famous humanitarian
This is the obvious approach. It is also the hardest. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Albert Schweitzer, who built hospitals in Africa; to Norman Borlaug, who developed high-yield strains of wheat; to Muhammed Yunus, who devised a new method of giving loans to low-income entrepreneurs; and to the Dalai Lama, who...actually, I'm not sure what the Dalai Lama does, but evidently it impresses a lot of people.

Bluff it
The key to Nobel success is that nobody should understand anything at all about what you do. Maybe you don't understand either, but that doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, all you have to do is convince somebody else that what you do is really important.

Start an international organization
Over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the UN's International Labor Organization, and the Red Cross. Gore himself will share his prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.