The problem is that when you look through the list for reasons why people won the award the words don't really mean anything to the average person and those that do tend to be for fairly tame things. I think the same is true for most of the awards.
Well this is why Marie Curie is the obvious famous one. Noone disputes she deserves to be on the list, and I doubt many people will argue with Einstein's name being on it. Beyond that, these people's achievments are just beyond the realm of understanding for the average guy. Like, if you asked me two days ago why Lorentz is famous, I'd have been mostly clueless. I know the name, isn't a force or a unit of measurement named after him? Today, I know he played a key role in unifying electricity and magnetism. The Lorentz Force, along with Maxwell's equations, is electromagnetism. How many people know that? He's one of the more famous names on the list, and very few people could tell you why. Even I couldn't tell you why he got the Nobel Prize, I just know he got it, and I'm aware of some of his work.