This year's Nobel prize winner will receive 20 percent less prize money than past winners.

The Nobel Foundation announced Monday that it is decreasing the winners' purse to $1.12 million because of the global economic crisis.

Past winners received $1.40 million.

The capital that forms the base for the awards was donated in the will of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and is managed by the foundation, which was set up in 1900.

The Nobel Prize is awarded every year for excellence in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.