The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 went to Y. Nambu, M. Kobayashi and T. Maskawa. In this talk I will describe the contributions for which they got the Nobel prize. Nambu introduced the concept of spontaneously broken symmetry into particle physics and was one of the initiators of the PCAC concept. Kobayashi and Maskawa introduced the mechanism by which the combined Parity-Charge Conjugation (CP) symmetry is broken in the Standard Model of particle physics. The talk will describe these two concepts at a level accessible for all physicists.