Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1833. Alfred's father, Immanuel, was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. Due to financial problems, Immanuel left the family and moved to Finland and then Russia, to earn his livelihood.

He started a mechanical workshop in St. Petersburg, Russia that provided equipment for the Russian army. Immanuel was able to get a contract to build naval mines that the Russians used to block enemy naval ships of St. Petersburg; They were simple devices consisting of submerged wooden casks filled with gunpowder.

Whatever Immanuel earned extra, he used to send to his family. When Alfred was nine years old, the family moved to Russia. There, Alfred and his brothers were educated by private instructors in the humanities and natural sciences.

As he grew up, Alfred's primary interests increased in English literature and poetry, although he was skilled in Chemistry and Physics. By the time he was seventeen years old, he also became fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English, and German languages.

Alfred's father wanted his sons to become engineers and disliked Alfred's interest in poetry. So, he sent Alfred abroad to study chemical engineering. Alfred received much of his chemical training in Paris, France.

He worked in Chemistry in Paris, but then moved back with his family to St. Petersburg and later to Stockholm, where he helped his father in his business. He experimented with nitroglycerine for years until he finally invented dynamite,

Alfred Nobel continued to work in Paris. There, he met Ascanio Sobrero, an Italian chemist who discovered nitroglycerine. This substance was so dangerous and powerful that if you put a single drop of nitroglycerin on the table and hit it with a hammer, it would explode and blow the head of the hammer off its handle. A few years later, after he had returned to Italy, Sobrero was seriously injured from an explosion of nitroglycerin.

In 1852, at the age of twenty-nine, Alfred returned to St. Petersburg and started looking after his family business, which was flourishing well because of its deliveries to the Russian army during the Crimean War. Alfred told his father about nitroglycerine and they worked together to develop a useful explosive.

A few years after the Crimean War ended in 1856, Immanuel Nobel was again bankrupt. In 1863, part of the family-including Alfred left St. Petersburg and returned to Stockholm. Immanuel and his sons rebuilt their business. This time he concentrated on the oil industry and soon became wealthy again.

Alfred was still interested in developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. Unfortunately, in 1864, while carrying out an experiment in an explosion killed Alfred's brother Emil and several other people.

This accident did not change Alfred's mind and he continued to produce and experiment with nitroglycerin. Nobel was carefully trying different ways to make nitroglycerin more stable so that it could be used in some useful manner.

In 1866, at age of thirty-three, Nobel had a full test tube of the substance enough to easily blow up his laboratory. He was just ready to pour a drop into another test tube. He was very nervous when suddenly the test tube full of nitroglycerin slipped out of his hands and fell on the floor!

Luckily, the tube fell into a packing box filled with sawdust. If it would have hit the floor, there probably would have been a great explosion, killing Alfred and others around him. Nobel started to test the mixture and found that it could be handled easier and was not as explosive as it was in the liquid form.

He found that mixing nitroglycerine with silica would turn the liquid into a paste which could be shaped into rods. In 1867, he patented this material under the name of dynamite.

As a result of the invention of dynamite, as well as his other inventions, Alfred built up several companies and laboratories in different countries around the world. He held patents on 355 inventions and became one of the world's richest men.

Nobel had become a rich man because of his discovery. But he felt guilty, because dynamite was later used in warfare, which led to the killing of many people. He was very much interested in social and peace-related issues.

So, he put much of his money into a trust fund to promote the peaceful use of Science. The Nobel Prize became an extension and a fulfillment of his lifetime interest. It is given every year. Because of his interest in literature and poetry, there were also the prizes for literature.

On November 29, 1896, Nobel made out his last will and testament that donated much of his fortune to the creation of the Nobel Prize.

Alfred Nobel died of a cerebral hemorrhage on December 10, 1896, at the age of sixty-three.