Established in 2002 in Hong Kong,[1] by Hong Kong entertainment mogul and philanthropist Run Run Shaw (邵逸夫),[2] the awards honour "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances, who have made outstanding contributions in academic and scientific research or applications, or who in other domains have achieved excellence.

The front of the medal bears a portrait of Shaw and the name of the prize in English and Traditional Chinese characters; the back bears the year, category, laureate's name and a quotation from the Chinese philosopher Xunzi "制天命而用之" (translated to English as "Grasp the law of nature and make use of it").

[9] 16 Nobel laureates - Jules A. Hoffmann, Bruce Beutler, Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, Shinya Yamanaka, Robert Lefkowitz, Brian Schmidt, Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, Michael W. Young, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor, Reinhard Genzel, and David Julius - are Shaw Laureates.

Two inaugural prizes were awarded for the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine: Stanley Norman Cohen, Herbert Boyer and Yuet Wai Kan jointly won one of them for their research in DNA while physiologist Richard Doll won the other for his contribution to cancer epidemiology.

Shiing-Shen Chern was awarded the inaugural Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences for his work on differential geometry.