Alfred Bernhard Nobel (; Swedish: 21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer.
Known for inventing
dynamite, Nobel also owned
Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. Nobel held 355 different patents, dynamite being the most famous. After reading a
premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to institute the
Nobel Prizes.
[1][2] The synthetic element
nobelium was named after him.His name also survives in modern-day companies such as
Dynamit Nobel and
AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies Nobel himself established.
Life and career
Alfred Nobel at a young age
Born in
Stockholm, Alfred Nobel was the third son of
Immanuel Nobel (1801–1872), an inventor and engineer, and Carolina Andriette (Ahlsell) Nobel (1805–1889).
[4] The couple married in 1827 and had eight children. The family was impoverished, and only Alfred and his three brothers survived past childhood.
[4][5] Through his father, Alfred Nobel was a descendant of the Swedish scientist
Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702),
[6] and in his turn the boy was interested in engineering, particularly explosives, learning the basic principles from his father at a young age. Alfred Nobel's interest in technology was inherited from his father, an alumnus of
Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm.
Following various business failures, Nobel's father moved to
Saint Petersburg in 1837 and grew successful there as a manufacturer of machine tools and explosives. He invented modern
plywood and started work on the "
torpedo".
[8] 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.
[4] For 18 months, from 1841 to 1842, Nobel went to the only school he ever attended as a child, the Jacobs Apologistic School in Stockholm.
As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist
Nikolai Zinin; then, in 1850, went to
Paris to further the work. There he met
Ascanio Sobrero, who had invented
nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin, as it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to heat or pressure. But Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive, as it had much more power than
gunpowder. At age 18, he went to the United States for four years to study chemistry, collaborating for a short period under 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'.
The family factory produced armaments for the
Crimean War (1853–1856); but, had difficulty switching back to regular domestic production when the fighting ended and they filed for bankruptcy.
[4] In 1859, Nobel's father left his factory in the care of the second son,
Ludvig Nobel (1831–1888), who greatly improved the business. Nobel and his parents returned to Sweden from Russia and Nobel devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of
nitroglycerine (discovered in 1847 by
Ascanio Sobrero, one of his fellow students under
Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the
University of Paris). Nobel invented a detonator in 1863; and, in 1865, he designed the
blasting cap.
[4]
On 3 September 1864, a shed, used for the preparation of nitroglycerin, exploded at the factory in
Heleneborg, Stockholm, killing five people, including Nobel's younger brother
Emil. Dogged by more minor accidents but unfazed, Nobel went on to build further factories, focusing on improving the stability of the explosives he was developing. 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.
[4] In 1875 Nobel invented
gelignite, more stable and powerful than dynamite, and in 1887 patented
ballistite, a predecessor of
cordite.
Nobel's brothers Ludvig and Robert exploited oilfields along the
Caspian Sea and became hugely rich in their own right. Nobel invested in these and amassed great wealth through the development of these new oil regions. During his life Nobel issued 355
patentsinternationally and by his death his business had established more than 90 armaments factories, despite his belief in pacifism.
In 1888, the death of his brother Ludvig caused several newspapers to publish obituaries of Alfred in error. A French obituary stated "Le marchand de la mort est mort" ("The merchant of death is dead").
Death
Accused of “high treason against France” for selling
Ballistite to Italy, Nobel moved from Paris to
Sanremo,
Italy in 1891.
[12][13] On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel succumbed to a lingering heart ailment, suffered a stroke, and died.
[13] Unbeknownst to his family, friends or colleagues, he had left most of his wealth in trust, in order to fund the awards that would become known as the
Nobel Prizes.He is buried in
Norra begravningsplatsen in
Stockholm.
Personal life
Nobel travelled for much of his business life, maintaining companies in various countries in Europe and North America and keeping a permanent home in Paris from 1873 to 1891.
[5] He remained a solitary character, given to periods of depression. Though Nobel remained unmarried, his biographers note that he had at least three loves. Nobel's first love was in Russia with a girl named Alexandra, who rejected his proposal. In 1876
Austro-
Bohemian Countess Bertha Kinsky became Alfred Nobel's secretary, but after only a brief stay she left him to marry her previous lover, Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner. Though her personal contact with Alfred Nobel had been brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and it is believed that she was a major influence in his decision to include a peace prize among those prizes provided in his will.
Bertha von Suttner was awarded the 1905 Nobel Peace prize, 'for her sincere peace activities'.
Nobel's third and longest-lasting relationship was with Sofie Hess from
Vienna, whom he met in 1876.
[5] The liaison lasted for 18 years.
[5] After his death, according to his biographers Evlanoff, Fluor and Fant, Nobel's letters were locked within the Nobel Institute in Stockholm. They were released only in 1955, to be included with other biographical data.
Despite the lack of formal secondary and tertiary level education, Nobel gained proficiency in six languages:
Swedish, French, Russian, English, German and
Italian. He also developed sufficient literary skill to write poetry in English. His
Nemesis, a prose tragedy in four acts about
Beatrice Cenci, partly inspired by
Percy Bysshe Shelley's
The Cenci, was printed while he was dying. The entire stock except for three copies was destroyed immediately after his death, being regarded as scandalous and blasphemous. The first surviving edition (bilingual Swedish–
Esperanto) was published in Sweden in 2003. The play has been translated into
Slovenian via the Esperanto version and into French.
[16] In 2010 it was published in Russia in another bilingual (
Russian–Esperanto) edition.
Inventions
Portrait of Nobel by Gösta Florman (1831–1900)
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 demonstrated his explosive for the first time that year, at a quarry in
Redhill,
Surrey, England. In order to help reestablish his name and improve the image of his business from the earlier controversies associated with the dangerous explosives, Nobel had also considered naming the highly powerful substance "Nobel's Safety Powder", but settled with Dynamite instead, referring to the
Greek word for "power" (
δύναμις).
Nobel later on 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. Gelignite was more stable, transportable and conveniently formed to fit into bored holes, like those used in drilling and mining, than the previously used compounds and was adopted as the standard technology for mining in the
Age of Engineering bringing Nobel a great amount of financial success, though at a significant cost to his health. An offshoot of this research resulted in Nobel's invention of
ballistite, the precursor of many modern smokeless powder explosives and still used as a rocket propellant.
Nobel Prizes
In 1888 Alfred's brother Ludvig died while visiting
Cannes and a
French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's
obituary.
[4] It condemned him for his invention of dynamite and is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death.The obituary stated,
Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead") and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."
[18] Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.
On 27 November 1895, at the
Swedish-
Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the
Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. 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. This converted to £1,687,837 (GBP) at the time.
[19][20][21][22] In 2012, the capital was worth around SEK 3.1 billion (USD 472 million, EUR 337 million), which is almost twice the amount of the initial capital, taking inflation into account.
[20]
The formulation for the literary prize being given for a work "in an ideal direction" (
i idealisk riktning in Swedish), is cryptic and has caused much confusion. For many years, the Swedish Academy interpreted "ideal" as "idealistic" (
idealistisk) and used it as a reason not to give the prize to important but less romantic authors, such as
Henrik Ibsen and
Leo Tolstoy. This interpretation has since been revised, and the prize has been awarded to, for example,
Dario Fo and
José Saramago, who do not belong to the camp of literary idealism.
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.
In 2001, Alfred Nobel's great-great-nephew, Peter Nobel (b. 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".
Monuments
The
Monument to Alfred Nobel (
Russian:
Памятник Альфреду Нобелю,
59.960787°N 30.334905°E) in Saint Petersburg is located along the
Bolshaya Nevka River on Petrogradskaya Embankment. It was dedicated in 1991 to mark the 90th anniversary of the first
Nobel Prize presentation. Diplomat
Thomas Bertelman and Professor
Arkady Melua initiators of creation of the monument (1989). Professor A. Melua has provided funds for the establishment of the monument (
J.S.Co. "Humanistica", 1990–1991). The abstract metal sculpture was designed by local artists Sergey Alipov and Pavel Shevchenko, and appears to be an explosion or branches of a tree. Petrogradskaya Embankment is the street where the Nobel's family lived until 1859.
Criticism
Alfred Nobel has also been criticized for his leading role in the manufacture and sales of weaponry, and focus has been given to the question of the prizes being intended to improve his reputation in that regard.
[26]
