Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and founded the prizes to escape his obituary. Born in Stockholm in 1833, the son of an inventor who moved the family to St Petersburg to make naval mines for the Russians, he was educated privately, spoke five languages, and wanted to be a writer. The family business was nitroglycerine, an explosive far more powerful than gunpowder and dangerously unstable. Nobel's factory at Heleneborg blew up in 1864, killing five people including his younger brother Emil. He solved the problem in 1867 by absorbing the liquid into kieselguhr, a porous diatomaceous earth, producing a solid that could be handled, transported and detonated only by a blasting cap — which he had also invented. He called it dynamite. It transformed mining, tunnelling, canal and railway construction, and it transformed warfare. He followed it with blasting gelatine and with ballistite, a smokeless propellant. He held 355 patents, built some ninety factories in twenty countries, and never married. In 1888 his brother Ludvig died in Cannes and a French newspaper, confusing them, printed his obituary under a headline calling him a merchant of death, and reporting that he had grown rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. He read it. His will, signed in Paris in 1895, left the bulk of his fortune in trust to fund annual prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. His family contested it and the first prizes were awarded in 1901. He died at San Remo in 1896.
- Lived: 1833 CE – 1896 CE
- Nationality: Swedish
- Roles: inventor, chemist, industrialist
