Who was Alfred Nobel?

Alfred Nobel

Born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1833, Nobel was the third son of wealthy industrialist Immanuel Nobel. Immanuel Nobel invented the rotary lathe used in plywood manufacturing, and also invented a type of underwater bomb similar to a torpedo. In 1842, the Nobel family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where Immanuel Nobel opened an armaments factory. This is where Alfred Nobel would get his start, experimenting with nitroglycerin alongside his father and brothers. In 1867, three years after an accidental explosion at the family factory killed his younger brother Emil, Nobel discovered a way to incorporate nitroglycerin with an inert substance in order to allow for safe transport. He originally wanted to call his new invention “Nobel’s Safe Powder” in order to differentiate it from the dangerous explosives that the Nobel family had been manufacturing. Instead, he named his invention dynamite, in reference to the Greek word for strength, thinami.

The Nobel Prize
Despite the fact that he had no formal secondary education, Alfred Nobel amassed a great fortune, learned six languages, and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1888, after the death of his older brother Ludvig, a French Newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for Alfred with the headline Le marchand de la mort est mort (The merchant of death is dead). A lifelong pacifist, Nobel, desired to leave a better legacy, so he set aside the majority of his estate for the creation of the Nobel Prizes to award excellence in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. In 1969, the Central Bank of Sweden began awarding economists as well, although Alfred Nobel’s great-grand nephew requested that they rename the prize in 2001.

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