Early life and education in Stockholm Alfred Nobel was born in
Stockholm,
Sweden, on 21 October 1833. He was the third son of
Immanuel Nobel (1801–1872), an inventor and engineer, and
Andriette Nobel (
née Ahlsell 1805–1889). The couple married in 1827 and had eight children. The family was impoverished, and only Alfred and his three brothers survived beyond their childhood. He invented the veneer
lathe, which made possible the production of modern
plywood, and started work on the
naval mine. In 1842, the family joined him in the city. Now prosperous, his parents were able to send Nobel to private tutors, and the boy excelled in his studies, particularly in chemistry and languages, achieving fluency in English,
French,
German, and
Russian.
Scientific career As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist
Nikolai Zinin; then, in 1850, he went to Paris to further the work. There he met
Ascanio Sobrero, who had synthesized
nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin because it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to variable heat or pressure. But Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use
nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive; it had much more power than
gunpowder. In 1851 at age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study, working for a short period under Swedish-American inventor
John Ericsson, who designed the
American Civil War ironclad,
USS Monitor. Nobel filed his first patent, an English patent for a
gas meter, in 1857, while his first Swedish patent, which he received in 1863, was on "ways to prepare gunpowder". He was then deprived of his license to produce explosives. Fazed by the accident, Nobel founded the company Nitroglycerin
AB in
Vinterviken so that he could continue to work in a more isolated area. Nobel invented
dynamite in 1867, a substance easier and safer to handle than the more unstable
nitroglycerin. Dynamite was patented in the US and the UK and was used extensively in
mining and the building of transport networks internationally.
Inventions Nobel found that when
nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like
kieselguhr (
diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to handle, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as "dynamite". Nobel later combined nitroglycerin with various nitrocellulose compounds, similar to
collodion, but settled on a more efficient recipe combining another nitrate explosive, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a more powerful explosive than dynamite.
Gelignite, or blasting gelatin, as it was named, was patented in 1876; and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate and various other substances.
Nobel Prize of a
Nobel Prize medal There is a well-known story about the origin of the Nobel Prize, although historians have been unable to verify it, and some dismiss the story as a myth. In 1888, the death of his brother Ludvig supposedly caused several newspapers to publish
obituaries of Alfred in error. One French newspaper condemned him for his invention of military explosives—in many versions of the story, dynamite is quoted, although this was mainly used for civilian applications—and this is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. Nobel read the obituary and was appalled at the idea that he would be remembered in this way. His decision to posthumously donate the majority of his wealth to found the
Nobel Prize has been credited to him wanting to leave behind a better legacy. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel's will allocated 94% of his total assets, 31,225,000
Swedish kronor, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. By 2022, the foundation had approximately 6 billion Swedish Kronor of invested capital. The first three of these prizes are awarded for eminence
in physical science,
in chemistry and
in medical science or physiology; the fourth is
for literary work "in an ideal direction" and
the fifth prize is to be given to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international
fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses. There was room for interpretation by the bodies he had named for deciding on the physical sciences and chemistry prizes, given that he had not consulted them before making the will. In his one-page testament, he stipulated that the money go to discoveries or inventions in the physical sciences and to discoveries or improvements in chemistry. He had opened the door to technological awards, but had not left instructions on how to deal with the distinction between science and technology. Since the deciding bodies he had chosen were more concerned with the former, the prizes went to scientists more often than engineers, technicians, or other inventors. Sweden's central bank
Sveriges Riksbank celebrated its 300th anniversary in 1968 by donating a large sum of money to the
Nobel Foundation to be used to set up a sixth prize in the field of economics in honor of Alfred Nobel. In 2001, Alfred Nobel's great-great-nephew, Peter Nobel (born 1931), asked the Bank of Sweden to differentiate its award to economists given "in Alfred Nobel's memory" from the five other awards. This request added to the controversy over whether the
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is actually a legitimate "Nobel Prize".
Health issues and death , at
Björkborn Manor, Nobel's residence in
Karlskoga, Sweden In his letters to his mistress, Hess, Nobel described constant pain, debilitating migraines, and "paralyzing" fatigue, leading some to believe that he suffered from
fibromyalgia. However, his concerns at the time were dismissed as
hypochondria, leading to further
depression. By 1895, Nobel had developed
angina pectoris. leaving most of his wealth in trust, unbeknownst to his family, to fund the
Nobel Prize awards. On 10 December 1896, he suffered a
stroke/
intracerebral hemorrhage and was first partially paralyzed and then died, aged 63. He is buried in
Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm. Based on his experimentation with explosives, his strenuous work habits, and the decline in his health at the end of the 1870s, some hypothesize that
nitroglycerine poisoning was a contributing factor to his death. ==Personal life==