Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work Alfred Nobel Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work by Nils Ringertz * Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833. His father Immanuel Nobel was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. In connection with his construction work Immanuel Nobel also experimented with different techniques for blasting rocks. Alfred Nobel. Alfred's mother, born Andriette Ahlsell , came from a wealthy family. Due to misfortunes in his construction work caused by the loss of some barges of building material, Immanuel Nobel was forced into bankruptcy the same year Alfred Nobel was born. In 1837 Immanuel Nobel left Stockholm and his family to start a new career in Finland and in Russia. To support the family, Andriette Nobel started a grocery store which provided a modest income. Meanwhile Immanuel Nobel was successful in his new enterprise in St. Petersburg, Russia. He started a mechanical workshop which provided equipment for the Russian army and he also convinced the Tsar and his generals that naval mines could be used to block enemy naval ships from threatening the city.

Immanuel Nobel Andriette Nobel The naval mines designed by Immanuel Nobel were simple devices consisting of submerged wooden casks filled with gunpowder. Anchored below the surface of the Gulf of Finland, they effectively deterred the British Royal Navy from moving into firing range of St. Petersburg during the Crimean war (1853-1856). Immanuel Nobel was also a pioneer in arms manufacture and in designing steam engines Painting by Immanuel Nobel demonstrating his sea or naval mines to the Tsar of Russia. Successful in his industrial and business ventures, Immanuel Nobel was able, in 1842, to bring his family to St. Petersburg. There, his sons were given a first class education by private teachers. The training included natural sciences, languages and literature. By the age of 17 Alfred Nobel was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German. His primary interests were in English literature and poetry as well as in chemistry and physics. Alfred's father, who wanted his sons to join his enterprise as engineers, disliked Alfred's interest in poetry and found his son rather introverted. In order to widen Alfred's horizons his father sent him abroad for further training in chemical engineering.

During a two year period Alfred Nobel visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States. In Paris, the city he came to like best, he worked in the private laboratory of Professor T. J. Pelouze, a famous chemist. There he met the young Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero who, three years earlier, had invented nitroglycerine , a highly explosive liquid. Nitroglycerine was produced by mixing glycerine with sulfuric and nitric acid. It was considered too dangerous to be of any practical use. Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that of gunpowder, the liquid would explode in a very unpredictable manner if subjected to heat and pressure. Alfred Nobel became very interested in nitroglycerine and how it could be put to practical use in construction work. He also realized that the safety problems had to be solved and a method had to be developed for the controlled detonation of nitroglycerine. In the United States he visited John Ericsson, the Swedish-American engineer who had developed the screw propeller for ships. In 1852 Alfred Nobel was asked to come back and work in the family enterprise which was booming because of its deliveries to the Russian army.

Together with his father he performed experiments to develop nitroglycerine as a commercially and technically useful explosive. As the war ended and conditions changed, Immanuel Nobel was again forced into bankruptcy. Immanuel and two of his sons, Alfred and Emil, left St. Petersburg together and returned to Stockholm. His other two sons, Robert and Ludvig, remained in St. Petersburg. With some difficulties they managed to salvage the family enterprise and then went on to develop the oil industry in the southern part of the Russian empire. They were very successful and became some of the wealthiest persons of their time. Explosion in the laboratory in Stockholm. After his return to Sweden in 1863, Alfred Nobel concentrated on developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. Several explosions, including one (1864) in which his brother Emil and several other persons were killed, convinced the authorities that nitroglycerine production was exceedingly dangerous. They forbade further experimentation with nitroglycerine within the Stockholm city limits and Alfred Nobel had to move his experimentation to a barge anchored on Lake Mälaren. Alfred was not discouraged and in 1864 he was able to start mass production of nitroglycerine.

To make the handling of nitroglycerine safer Alfred Nobel experimented with different additives. He soon found that mixing nitroglycerine with kieselguhr would turn the liquid into a paste which could be shaped into rods of a size and form suitable for insertion into drilling holes. In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite . To be able to detonate the dynamite rods he also invented a detonator (blasting cap) which could be ignited by lighting a fuse. These inventions were made at the same time as the diamond drilling crown and the pneumatic drill came into general use. Together these inventions drastically reduced the cost of blasting rock, drilling tunnels, building canals and many other forms of construction work. Alfred Nobel's laboratory in Bofors, Sweden. The market for dynamite and detonating caps grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a very skillful entrepreneur and businessman. By 1865 his factory in Krümmel near Hamburg, Germany, was exporting nitroglycerine explosives to other countries in Europe, America and Australia. Over the years he founded factories and laboratories in some 90 different places in more than 20 countries.

Although he lived in Paris much of his life he was constantly traveling. Victor Hugo at one time described him as "Europe's richest vagabond". When he was not traveling or engaging in business activities Nobel himself worked intensively in his various laboratories, first in Stockholm and later in Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland), Paris and Sevran (France), Karlskoga (Sweden) and San Remo (Italy). He focused on the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions, including such materials as synthetic rubber and leather, artificial silk, etc. By the time of his death in 1896 he had 355 patents. Intensive work and travel did not leave much time for a private life. At the age of 43 he was feeling like an old man. At this time he advertised in a newspaper "Wealthy, highly-educated elderly gentleman seeks lady of mature age, versed in languages, as secretary and supervisor of household." The most qualified applicant turned out to be an Austrian woman, Countess Bertha Kinsky. After working a very short time for Nobel she decided to return to Austria to marry Count Arthur von Suttner.

In spite of this Alfred Nobel and Bertha von Suttner remained friends and kept writing letters to each other for decades. Over the years Bertha von Suttner became increasingly critical of the arms race. She wrote a famous book, Lay Down Your Arms and became a prominent figure in the peace movement. No doubt this influenced Alfred Nobel when he wrote his final will which was to include a Prize for persons or organizations who promoted peace. Several years after the death of Alfred Nobel, the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) decided to award the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize to Bertha von Suttner. Bertha von Suttner. Alfred Nobel's greatness lay in his ability to combine the penetrating mind of the scientist and inventor with the forward-looking dynamism of the industrialist. Nobel was very interested in social and peace-related issues and held what were considered radical views in his era. He had a great interest in literature and wrote his own poetry and dramatic works. The Nobel Prizes became an extension and a fulfillment of his lifetime interests.

Many of the companies founded by Nobel have developed into industrial enterprises that still play a prominent role in the world economy, for example Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Great Britain; Société Centrale de Dynamite, France; and Dyno Industries in Norway. Toward the end of his life, he acquired the company AB Bofors in Karlskoga, where Björkborn Manor became his Swedish home. Alfred Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896. When his will was opened it came as a surprise that his fortune was to be used for Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The executors of his will were two young engineers, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist. They set about forming the Nobel Foundation as an organization to take care of the financial assets left by Nobel for this purpose and to coordinate the work of the Prize-Awarding Institutions. This was not without its difficulties since the will was contested by relatives and questioned by authorities in various countries. Ragnar Sohlman. * Nils Ringertz was born in 1932.

He got an MD/PhD in medicine in 1960 and specialized in medical cell genetics. His main line of research has been nucleocytoplasmic signaling and digital imaging of cell structures using fluorescent probes. Nils Ringertz served as professor of medical cell genetics at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm in 1969-1993, was chairman at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) of the Medical Nobel Institute in 1977-1993, and chairman of the Medical Nobel Committee 1976-1999. From 1963 to 1993 he was editor of Experimental Cell Research (Academic Press). Nils Ringertz was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and served with a number of international scientific organizations. In 1994 he initiated the Electronic Nobel Museum Project (ENM) which led to the Nobelprize.org (NeM). Nils Ringertz died in his home in Stockholm on June 8, 2002. Share this: To cite this page MLA style: "Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work". Nobelprize.org.

Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 29 Dec 2016. < Nobel Prize History - How the First Nobel Prizes Were Awarded Share By Jennifer Rosenberg A pacifist at heart and an inventor by nature, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. However, the invention that he thought would end all wars was seen by many others as an extremely deadly product. In 1888, when Alfred's brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for Alfred which called him the "merchant of death." Not wanting to go down in history with such a horrible epitaph, Nobel created a will that soon shocked his relatives and established the now famous Nobel Prizes . Who was Alfred Nobel? Why did Nobel's will make establishing the prizes so difficult? Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1842, when Alfred was nine years old, his mother (Andrietta Ahlsell) and brothers (Robert and Ludvig) moved to St. Petersburg, Russia to join Alfred's father (Immanuel), who had moved there five years earlier.

The following year, Alfred's younger brother, Emil, was born. Immanuel Nobel, an architect, builder, and inventor, opened a machineshop in St. continue reading below our video Profile of Alfred Nobel Petersburg and was soon very successful with contracts from the Russian government to build defense weapons. Because of his father's success, Alfred was tutored at home until the age of 16. Yet, many consider Alfred Nobel a mostly self-educated man. Besides being a trained chemist, Alfred was an avid reader of literature and was fluent in English, German, French, Swedish, and Russian. Alfred also spent two years traveling. He spent much of this time working in a laboratory in Paris, but also traveled to the United States. Upon his return, Alfred worked in his father's factory. He worked there until his father went bankrupt in 1859. Alfred soon began experimenting with nitroglycerine, creating his first explosions in early summer 1862.

In only a year (October 1863), Alfred received a Swedish patent for his percussion detonator - the "Nobel lighter." Having moved back to Sweden to help his father with an invention, Alfred established a small factory at Helenborg near Stockholm to manufacture nitroglycerine. Unfortunately, nitroglycerine is a very difficult and dangerous material to handle. In 1864, Alfred's factory blew up - killing several people, including Alfred's younger brother, Emil. The explosion did not slow down Alfred, and within only a month, he organized other factories to manufacture nitroglycerine. In 1867, Alfred invented a new and safer-to-handle explosive - dynamite . Though Alfred became famous for his invention of dynamite, many people did not intimately know Alfred Nobel. He was a quiet man who did not like a lot of pretense or show. He had very few friends and never married. And though he recognized the destructive power of dynamite, Alfred believed it was a harbinger of peace. Alfred told Bertha von Suttner, an advocate for world peace, My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses.

The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.* Unfortunately, Alfred did not see peace in his time. Alfred Nobel, chemist and inventor, died alone on December 10, 1896 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. After several funeral services were held and Alfred Nobel's body was cremated, the will was opened. Everyone was shocked. The Will Alfred Nobel had written several wills during his lifetime, but the last one was dated November 27, 1895 - a little over a year before he died. Nobel's last will left approximately 94 percent of his worth to the establishment of five prizes (physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace) to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Though Nobel had proposed a very grandiose plan for the prizes in his will, there were a great many problems with the will. Relatives of Alfred Nobel were so shocked that many wanted the will contested. The format of the will had formal defects which could have caused the will to be contested in France.

It was unclear which country Alfred had his legal residence. He was a Swedish citizen until age nine, but after that he had lived in Russia, France, and Italy without becoming a citizen. Nobel had been making plans for a final home for himself in Sweden when he died. The location of residency would determine what country's laws would govern the will and the estate. If determined to be France, the will could have been contested and French taxes would have been taken. Because Nobel had wanted the Norwegian Storting (parliament) to choose the peace prize winner, many charged Nobel with a lack of patriotism. The "fund" that was to implement the prizes did not yet exist and would have to be created. The organizations that Nobel named in his will to award the prizes had not been asked to take on these duties prior to Nobel's death. Also, there was no plan to compensate these organizations for their work on the prizes. The will did not state what should be done if no prize winners for a year were found. Because of the incompleteness and other obstacles presented by Alfred's will, it took five years of hurdles before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes awarded.

The First Nobel Prizes On the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, December 10, 1901, the first set of Nobel Prizes were awarded. Chemistry: Jacobus H. van't Hoff Physics: Wilhelm C. Röntgen Physiology or Medicine: Emil A. von Behring Literature: Rene F. A. Sully Prudhomme Peace: Jean H. Dunant and Frédéric Passy * As quoted in W. Odelberg (ed.), Nobel: The Man & His Prizes (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1972) 12. Bibliography Axelrod, Alan and Charles Phillips. What Everyone Should Know About the 20th Century. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Adams Media Corporation, 1998. Odelberg, W. (ed.). Nobel: The Man & His Prizes. New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1972. Official Website of the Nobel Foundation.

Retrieved April 20, 2000 from the World Wide Web: Alfred Nobel Facts & Biography | Famous Chemists Born: Oct 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden Died: Dec 10, 1896 (at age 63) in Sanremo, Italy Nationality: Swedish Famous For: Invention of dynamite, establishment of Nobel Prize Alfred Nobel was born on October 21st, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. History shows that the men in his family were mostly engineers and businessmen and Alfred was quick to follow in their footsteps. In 1842, Alfred and his family moved to St. Petersburg where his father, Immanuel Nobel, had built a factory for armament a few years earlier. His father used to manufacture land mines for the Tsar’s army where he often made good profits. All throughout his life Alfred showed a lot of wit especially in his ability to quickly master foreign languages; he mastered four foreign languages. Alfred also showed great intelligence in natural sciences, especially in chemistry. Work and Discoveries In 1850 he went abroad to study chemical engineering.

He travelled to Sweden, France, Germany and the United States before returning to Sweden in 1863. While in Sweden he devoted most of his time to the study of explosives. In particular, he was interested in the safe manufacture of a compound called nitro-glycerin. Nitro-glycerin is a highly unstable explosive. Nobel was interest in it mainly because his brother Emil has been killed in an explosion caused by the substance. He added the nitro-glycerin into silica. This made the compound safer and easier to manipulate. In 1867 he perfected the science and called it dynamite. Dynamite was what made Nobel one of the most famous chemists in history . Dynamite was then used all over the world for blasting tunnels, building railways, roads and cutting canals. Nobel went on to create many other kinds of explosives and his work was recognized all over the world. He even received an honorary award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. They recognized his inventions which were of practical use to mankind. This award drove him to achieve many other science awards.

Life in Business In the 1870’s and 1880’s Alfred was able to build quite a number of factories all over Europe that were used in the manufacturing of explosives. He bought an ironworks facility in Sweden in 1894 which later became the center of the famous Bofors arms factory. By the time Nobel died he had registered over 355 patents. Nobel Prizes It took quite some time before Alfred was able to write up his will. The final version of the will stated that all of his fortune should be reserved for presenting annual awards in the fields of chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and peace. An economics prize was also added later. Nobel died at his home in San Remo on December 10th, 1896 and is buried in Stockholm, Sweden. The contents of his will became known after his death. With this generosity and selflessness, Alfred Nobel founded the Nobel Prizes which have inspired and motivated many people in different fields. Famous Chemists Alfred Nobel - Biography, Facts and Pictures Alfred Nobel Lived 1833 – 1896.

Alfred Nobel is famous for the annual prizes in science, literature, and peace awarded in his name. Although he was born into poverty, his family members were creative and entrepreneurial; they worked hard and became successful. Alfred was the scientist of the family, inventing and manufacturing dynamite, the blasting cap, gelignite and ballistite. He grew fantastically rich on the proceeds of his explosives businesses. In his last will and testament, he bequeathed over ninety percent of his fortune to fund the Nobel Prizes. Advertisements Beginnings Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Sweden’s capital city, Stockholm, on October 21, 1833. His father was Immanuel Nobel, a self-made engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who had been formally schooled only to the age of 14. His mother was Andriette Ahlsell, an accountant’s daughter. Although at first Immanuel Nobel’s business prospered, by the time Alfred was born, his father was bankrupt. A series of business misfortunes followed by the family home burning to the ground had left the family penniless. Alfred was their fourth-born child and barely survived his first few days. He suffered ill-health for most of his life.

Alfred’s mother and her sickly son formed a strong bond through the years of constant care she gave him during his frequent illnesses. When Alfred was four years old, his father left Sweden for Finland where he had been offered business opportunities; it was a long time before he sent any money home. Alfred’s maternal grandfather gave his daughter, Alfred’s mother, money to start a tiny grocery store in which she worked from first thing in the morning to last thing at night for a small profit. Alfred began school aged seven – a school for impoverished children called Jacob’s Parish Apologist School. The school’s pupils and teachers were tough; there were frequent fights in the playground and most pupils were beaten by their teachers every day for any small mistakes in their schoolwork. Alfred did well in his schoolwork, which made his absent father proud. Russia Immanuel, Alfred’s father, had also been doing well, forming a company producing arms for Russia’s military. Now wealthy, and the owner of a foundry and a factory, he sent for his family to join him in Russia in the fall of 1842. Alfred was aged nine when he sailed for Russia’s capital St. Petersburg.

There it took him just a year to learn Russian fluently. Instead of going to school, the Nobel children were taught by private tutors. Immanuel was a strong advocate of the Protestant work ethic. He taught his children that they could shape their own future prosperity with hard work and dedication. They were tutored and driven to work for long hours every day. Some children would have found this oppressive, but Alfred prospered. He loved learning, and added English, French and German to the languages he could speak fluently. His tutors were of the highest quality – he was taught chemistry, his favorite subject, by university professors. Meanwhile, Immanuel’s business was growing fast and he was making a wide and growing range of arms. European and US Tour At about the age of 16, Alfred considered becoming a writer. Alfred Nobel at about age 16. After mastering English, he had become a big fan of Shakespeare’s plays and had started writing poetry influenced by Percy Shelley. Alfred’s father appreciated the importance of good literature, but he did not want his son to follow this path. He offered Alfred the opportunity to travel around Europe and the USA if he abandoned his literary aspirations and concentrated on working in the family’s prospering industrial and arms businesses.

Alfred agreed. On his tour he spent time in place of business interest – laboratories and factories – and spent extended amounts of time in Paris and New York. When, aged 19, he returned to Russia in 1852, he worked in the family business: by now it had about 1,000 employees. Ill-health, Nitroglycerin, and Financial Trouble Back in Russia, Alfred worked hard but suffered ill-health periodically. By the time he was 25, the family business was in severe trouble. After its 1856 defeat in the Crimean War, Russia’s government stopped paying its bills. During the Crimean war, Immanuel had unsuccessfully tried to devise arms based on a new explosive, much more powerful than gunpowder, called nitroglycerin, but the substance proved difficult to detonate reliably. Alfred had learned a lot about nitroglycerin in Paris from Ascanio Sobrero, the chemist who had first produced it, and he would return to experimenting with it a few years later. The Nobels could not generate enough other work to compensate for the lost business from the Russian government.

They liquidated most of their business, leaving what remained in the care of one of Alfred’s older brothers, Ludvig, who actually went on to make a great success of it. Alfred’s parents returned to Sweden with a small amount of money. Alfred and his brother Robert stayed in Russia, sharing an apartment in St. Petersburg. Alfred set up a laboratory in the kitchen and began working on inventions. In 1862, aged 29, he discovered that certain mixtures of nitroglycerin mixed with gunpowder allowed reliable detonation. His older brothers Robert and Ludvig helped him with large-scale testing on a frozen canal outside St. Petersburg. Alfred Nobel’s Achievements Nobel had an extraordinarily innovative mind, from which new ideas poured. “If I come up with 300 ideas in a year, and only one of them is useful, I am content.” Alfred Nobel His genius was bolstered by steely determination to succeed and a huge capacity for hard work. These were driven by bitter memories of the poverty his family endured when he was a young boy. Nitroglycerin Early in 1863, Nobel returned from Russia to his hometown of Stockholm.

Very soon he began experimenting in a laboratory on a small industrial site his father had taken in Heleneborg, outside the city. Although never physically strong, he worked 18 hour days, personally performing hundreds of experiments. After learning how to detonate nitroglycerin with a small amount of gunpowder, Nobel began producing nitroglycerin in late 1863, with significant production beginnning in the summer of 1864. However, disaster struck in September 1864. In a laboratory housed in a shed at Heleneborg, Nobel’s younger brother Emil was working alongside a student fulfilling a nitroglycerin order from a railroad company carving out a tunnel through rock. An accident in the shed caused a huge explosion, killing the pair instantly. Also killed were a young cleaner, a young boy, and a carpenter who, unluckily, was passing the site. Although he was upset about the deaths, Nobel continued production of nitroglycerin. Demand for the explosive was so strong that by the beginning of the 1870s Nobel had opened production facilities – some of which would be blown up in accidents – all over Europe and in the USA.

Following nitroglycerin’s success, Nobel spent several years grappling with foreign patent offices whose rules made it difficult for a foreigner to prove he was entitled to a patent. He also spent precious time and energy battling with a number of crooks and shysters who tried to profit from his invention. The Blasting Cap Detonator In 1864, Nobel patented the blasting cap. He had performed many experiments seeking the best way to detonate explosives; in the blasting cap, he invented it. A blasting cap is a small amount of explosive that, when detonated, pushes a pressure wave through the main explosive charge causing instant detonation of all of the explosive. Variations of Nobel’s blasting cap are still the preferred way to detonate explosives. In fact, his blasting cap invention was used for over 50 years without modification. Dynamite In November 1863, Nobel mixed nitroglycerin with porous substances such as coal and produced a very powerful and stable explosive that could be detonated reliably. In January 1864, he applied for a Swedish patent for this mixture. He then did nothing. He was too busy manufacturing and selling nitroglycerin and fighting patent disputes.

As he saw more and more nitroglycerin accidents occurring, Nobel returned to his experiments with nitroglycerin and porous substances. These experiments resulted in his creation of dynamite. His September 1866 Swedish patent reads: “My new explosive, called dynamite, is simply nitroglycerin in combination with a very porous silicate… it is a reddish-yellow, soft and plastic mass that is pressed into cartridges of a certain thickness and then enclosed in paper wrappers.” Alfred Nobel How the Nobel Prize Was Born: A Surprising Story of Bad Journalism, Existential Guilt, and Dynamite – Brain Pickings The only thing more interesting than the colorful history of Nobel Prize laureates — including such remarkable humans as Marie Curie , not only the first woman to win a Nobel Prize but also the first person and the only person until recently to win a Nobel in two different sciences, Aung San Suu Kyi , the only laureate who received the prize while under house arrest , and Ernest Hemingway , whose acceptance speech is prize-worthy in its own right — is the founding story of the Nobel Prize itself.

The striking yet little-known origin of the prize is one of the many curiosities journalist and museum aficionado Molly Oldfield hunts down in The Secret Museum ( public library ) — a boundlessly fascinating inventory of sixty never-before-seen “treasures too precious to display,” culled from the archives and secret storage locations of some of the world’s top cultural institutions, from London’s Royal Society, wherein a piece of Newton’s apple tree is painstakingly preserved, to New York’s Morgan Library, which houses an original Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum, to Nabokov’s cabinet of butterfly genitalia held at Harvard. Portrait of Alfred Nobel by Gösta Florman / The Royal Library From Olov Amelin, curator of Stockholm’s Nobel Museum , Oldfield learns that the revered Nobel Prize — held today as an echelon of celebrating the human spirit at its highest potential — has a rather dark origin of destruction and confusion.

In 1888, when a humble Swede by the name of Ludwig Nobel died, the French press confused him with his younger brother Alfred — the famed Swedish entrepreneur and inventor who amassed his fortune by making such deadly delights as dynamite and ballistic — and ran an eviscerating epitaph about this “Tradesman of Death.” Alfred Nobel, having the rare misfortune of witnessing his legacy while still alive, found himself heartbroken and determined to change his story before it was too late. Likening his tale to that of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Oldfield writes: Nobel had a vision of the future that might be, and he decided to change his destiny. He thought for a while about what to do. Then, on November 27, 1895, he took action. He went to the Swedish Norwegian Club in the Marais in Paris, sat down at a writing desk — which is still there (the venue is now called simply the Swedish Club) — and wrote his last will and testament. Over four pages, he set out what he wanted to give to his relatives — he had no children — and to his staff.

He asked that the rest of his estate be invested into a fund, “the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.” The interest was to be divided into five equal parts and each part given to the person who had made the most important discovery each year in four fields and, finally, “one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congress” — the Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel’s original handwritten will. Image courtesy of Molly Oldfield / The Nobel Foundation This is the translation of the passage from Nobel’s will outlining the ideals and practical execution of the prize: The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.

The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical work by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.

The will, which is now kept in a vault at the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm and has never been on display, was so impromptu that Nobel asked four random gentlemen who happened to be in the Club that day to witness the document. When he died the following year, his 25-year-old assistant Ragnar Sohlman was entrusted with executing Nobel’s wishes. Oldfield captures the young man’s relentless dedication to his task: He raced around Paris in a horse-drawn carriage, collecting cash, papers and bonds from different banks. He packed everything into boxes and shipped it to Sweden, from the Gare du Nord, Paris, as registered luggage. Back in Sweden, he began slowly to sell Nobel’s shares, so the companies he had been invested in didn’t crash. And yet Nobel’s will was met with enormous resistance at first. His relatives, completely unaware of his plan, were shocked. The Swedish royal family condemned him for being unpatriotic by setting up a nationality-blind prize fund rather than rewarding Swedes only. His staff was outraged by the enormous administrative and organizational costs of such an operation, which they thought Nobel didn’t consider when he made his will.

But the idea also stirred quite a few hearts: The Olympics were happening in Greece in 1896 and there was a general sense of wanting to create a world family and to honor people who were helping mankind. Ragnar found more and more support as he worked steadily to set up the Nobel Foundation, and to make Nobel’s wishes a reality. In 1901, five years after Nobel’s will was first read, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Sweden and Norway. A century later, the museum opened in Stockholm. The history of the Nobel Prize, visualized. Click image for details. Today, it gives one pause to consider that the highest honor of human achievement owes its origin to a combination of journalistic error and existential guilt. The more cynical might say that Alfred Nobel was exercising an especially grandiose form of vanity, but cynicism has no place in the spirit of the Prize, so in honoring that, let’s instead acknowledge that altruism has always been a tricky subject and that the desire to leave something meaningful behind, rather than a form of vanity, is among the universal longings of the human condition.

The Secret Museum is astonishing — quite literally — in its entirety, unraveling such scrumptious and surprising curiosities as Van Gogh’s unseen sketchbooks, the tools that belonged to Queen Victoria’s dentist, and Winston Churchill’s sketches. donating = loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes me hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner. Monthly donation The Nobel Prizes - Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel If I have a thousand ideas, and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.

-Alfred Nobel Physics/Chemistry Economic Sciences Nobel Peace Prize Literature Physiology/Medicine The Nobel Prizes "The whole of my remaining estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind." -Alfred Nobel, his Will "It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not." -Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Prizes through his will. The prizes are for Medicine/Physiology, Literature, Physics, Chemistry, and the Peace Prize. The Economic Sciences prize was added later on, but not part of the Nobel Prizes. The Medicine/Physiology award would go to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine" (Alfred Nobel's Will) and is awarded by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Literature award would go to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in ideal direction" (Alfred Nobel's Will) and is awarded by the Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. The Physics award would go to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of Physics." (Alfred Nobel's Will) and is awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Chemistry award would go to "the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement” (Alfred Nobel's Will) and is awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Economic Sciences prize was not added until 1969. The Economic Sciences prize is not a Nobel Prize because it was created in honor of Alfred Nobel by the Sveriges Riksbank. The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden. The Peace Prize would be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses" (Alfred Nobel's Will) and is awarded given by the Norwegian sorting.

History "Nobel's last will left approximately 94 percent of his worth to the establishment of five prizes (physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace)..." (History of the Nobel Prizes).His estate of 9.5 million dollars, went towards awarding the Nobel Prizes. "Though Nobel had proposed a very grandiose plan for the prizes in his will, there were great many problems with the will. Relatives of Alfred Nobel were so shocked that many wanted the will contested...The location of residency (of Alfred Nobel) would determine what country's laws would govern the will and the estate (but no one knew his legal residence) ...The organizations that Nobel named in his will to award the prizes and not been asked to take on these duties prior to Nobel's death. Also, there was no plan to compensate these organizations for their work on the prizes...Because of the incompleteness and other obstacles presented by Alfred's will, it took five years of hurdles before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes awarded." (History of the Nobel Prizes) There were many fights over the will, even the king of Sweden did not agree at first to the idea of the Nobel Prize.

Although, against all odds, the creation of the Nobel Prizes came to reality. How it works The Nobel Prizes are nominated by; professors of universities in Norway and Sweden, members of the Swedish academy, Royal Academy of Science, Nobel Committee members, legislative assemblies and governments of states in the world and distinguished people that is invited to nominate. "Anybody worthy of receiving a Nobel award can be nominated irrespective of color, creed or race. The simple rule for nomination is that a person cannot nominate himself and a dead person cannot be nominated. The gold medal and diploma is given in appreciation of the work they have done for the world and the cash prize is given to continue the work that they have been doing, that is why it is given only to person who are alive." (Nobel Prizes Winners: How They Are Chosen) The ceremony of the Nobel Prizes is at the city hall in Stockholm. There, the Nobel winners recieve their prizes from the king of sweden and present their speech. Although the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway.That ceremony would start at 10 am in the assembely hall of the University of Oslo, presence of the king and the Norwegion sorting.

After the ceremony there would be a grand banquet with 1,300, including the royal family. The ceremony would have entertainment and food. Then, there would be an after party with the few important guests. Next is a large Nobel Banquet at the city hall to end the day. Obama showing his awards Context of Alfred Nobel's Will "I, the undersigned, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, do hereby, after mature deliberation, declare the following to be my last Will and Testament with respect to such property as may be left by me at the time of my death: To my nephews, Hjalmar and Ludvig Nobel, the sons of my brother Robert Nobel, I bequeath the sums of Two Hundred Thousand Crowns each; To my nephew Emanuel Nobel, the sum of Three Hundred Thousand, and to my niece Mina Nobel, One Hundred Thousand Crowns; To my brother Robert Nobel's daughters, Ingeborg and Tyra, the sum of One Hundred Thousand Crowns each; Miss Olga Boettger, at present staying with Mrs. Brand, 10 Rue St. Florentin, Paris, will receive One Hundred Thousand Francs; Mrs.

Sofie Kapy von Kapivar, whose address is known to the Anglo-Oesterreichische Bank in Vienna, is hereby entitled to an annuity of 6000 Florins Ö.W which is paid to her by the said bank, and to this end I have deposited in this Bank the amount of 15000 Fl in Hungarian State bonds; Mr. Alarik Liedbeck, presently living at 26 Sturegatan, Stockholm, will receive One Hundred Thousand Crowns; Miss Elise Antun, presently living at 32 rue de Lubeck, Paris, is entitled to an annuity of Two Thousand Five Hundred Francs. In addition, Forty Eight Thousand Francs owned by her are at present in my custody, and shall be refunded. Mr. Alfred Hammond, Waterford, Texas, U.S.A.

will receive Ten Thousand Dollars; The Misses Emy and Marie Winkelmann, Potsdamerstrasse, 51, Berlin, will receive Fifty Thousand Marks each; Mrs Gaucher, 2 bis Boulevard du Viaduc, Nimes, France will receive One Hundred Thousand Francs; My servants, Auguste Oswald and his wife Alphonse Tournand, employed in my laboratory at San Remo, will each receive an annuity of One Thousand Francs; My former servant, Joseph Girardot, 5, Place St. Laurent, Châlons sur Saône, is entitled to an annuity of Five Hundred Francs, and my former gardener, Jean Lecof, at present with Mrs. Desoutter, receveur Curaliste, Mesnil, Aubry pour Ecouen, S.& O., France, will receive an annuity of Three Hundred Francs; Mr.

Georges Fehrenbach, 2, Rue Compiègne, Paris, is entitled to an annual pension of Five Thousand Francs from January 1, 1896 to January 1, 1899, when the said pension shall discontinue; A sum of Twenty Thousand Crowns each, which has been placed in my custody, is the property of my brother's children, Hjalmar, Ludvig, Ingeborg and Tyra, and shall be repaid to them. The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.

The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical work by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not.

As Executors of my testamentary dispositions, I hereby appoint Mr. Ragnar Sohlman, resident at Bofors, Värmland, and Mr Rudolf Lilljequist, 31 Malmskillnadsgatan, Stockholm, and at Bengtsfors near Uddevalla. To compensate for their pains and attention, I grant to Mr. Ragnar Sohlman, who will presumably have to devote most time to this matter, One Hundred Thousand Crowns, and to Mr. Rudolf Lilljequist, Fifty Thousand Crowns; At the present time, my property consists in part of real estate in Paris and San Remo, and in part of securities deposited as follows: with The Union Bank of Scotland Ltd in Glasgow and London, Le Crédit Lyonnais, Comptoir National d'Escompte, and with Alphen Messin & Co. in Paris; with the stockbroker M.V. Peter of Banque Transatlantique, also in Paris; with Direction der Disconto Gesellschaft and Joseph Goldschmidt & Cie, Berlin; with the Russian Central Bank, and with Mr.

Emanuel Nobel in Petersburg; with Skandinaviska Kredit Aktiebolaget in Gothenburg and Stockholm, and in my strong-box at 59, Avenue Malakoff, Paris; further to this are accounts receivable, patents, patent fees or so-called royalties etc. in connection with which my Executors will find full information in my papers and books. This Will and Testament is up to now the only one valid, and revokes all my previous testamentary dispositions, should any such exist after my death. Finally, it is my express wish that following my death my veins shall be opened, and when this has been done and competent Doctors have confirmed clear signs of death, my remains shall be cremated in a so-called crematorium. Paris, 27 November, 1895 Alfred Bernhard Nobel That Mr.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel, being of sound mind, has of his own free will declared the above to be his last Will and Testament, and that he has signed the same, we have, in his presence and the presence of each other, hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses: Sigurd Ehrenborg Alfred Nobel Norsk Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel's family descended from Olof Rudbeck, the most famous scientist in Sweden in the 17th century. Alfred was fluent in several languages. Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Stockholm on 21 October 1833. The menfolk of the family were engineers and businessmen. In 1842, Alfred moved with his mother and brothers to St. Petersburg, where his father Immanuel Nobel had opened an armaments factory a few years prior. He manufactured landmines for the Tsar's army, and made good profits. Alfred did not attend school but received private tutoring from good teachers. He was quick to master four foreign languages, and showed great ability in the natural sciences, especially chemistry. The end of the Crimean War in 1856 had unfortunate results for Immanuel Nobel and his family: the factory went bankrupt.

The parents and their youngest son Emil returned home to Sweden; the three older boys stayed in St. Petersburg to see if they could get the business back on a sound footing. It was at this time that Alfred Nobel began to take an interest in nitroglycerine - an extremely explosive liquid invented by the Italian Ascanio Sobrero. Nobel saw that there was a lot of money to be made from industrial exploitation of the explosive, provided a safer way could be found of handling it. In 1863, after extensive experimentation, he came up with a promising blend of nitroglycerine and black powder, which he marketed as "blasting oil". On it he obtained the first of a total of 355 patents. It marked the first step on the road to what was to prove his greatest success: the invention of dynamite. Alfred Nobel patented the nitroglycerine-based explosive dynamite in 1867. In the following year, he received an honorary award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for "important inventions for the practical use of mankind". He was extremely proud of that prize. The experience was certainly an important source of inspiration for the science prizes he was later to establish in his own name.

By this time Alfred Nobel was already establishing himself as a successful industrialist and businessman, first in Europe and then in the USA. Despite several setbacks - the most tragic was the disastrous explosion at Nobel's explosives factory in Stockholm in 1864 which cost his younger brother Emil his life - he gradually became one of the wealthiest men of his day. As an inventor and man of business, Alfred Nobel was both determined and confident. On the personal level however, he was modest, almost shy. He has been described as a lonely and restless brooder who was often ill, who never wanted or had the opportunity to found a family of his own. He could be tough and cynical in his business dealings, and was in his own words at the same time both a misanthrope and a "superidealist". He loved literature, had written poems and a play in his earlier years, and built up a large book collection. Here lay the seeds of his decision to set up a literature prize to be awarded to the author of the best work "of an idealistic tendency".

But his idealism also had a political aspect: Alfred Nobel supported those who spoke up against militarism and war, and wanted to make a contribution to work for disarmament and the peaceful solution of international conflicts. In this respect, the Austrian author and peace activist Bertha von Suttner exercised considerable influence on him. They were close friends and corresponded for many years. There is reason to believe that the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize was principally inspired by her. It took Alfred Nobel several years to complete the drawing up of his will. The final version, dated 27 November 1895, laid down that the bulk of his immense fortune should be reserved for a fund for the financing of annual honorary awards to be made in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature and peace. The contents of the will only became known after his death. Alfred Nobel lived much of his adult life in Paris. In 1891 he moved to San Remo, Italy. A few years later, he bought the Bofors ironworks and armaments factories, had a splendid mansion erected in Karlskoga, and gradually prepared to move home to Sweden for good, despite a hearty dislike of the Nordic winter.

That is not how things turned out, however. On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel died suddenly in his home in San Remo. Contact The Norwegian Nobel Institute Post and visitor address: Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel Location of death: San Remo, Italy Cause of death: Cerebral Hemorrhage Nationality: Sweden Executive summary: Dynamite inventor, established Nobel Prize Alfred Nobel's father was a prosperous munitions manufacturer in Russia, and his naval mines -- wooden casks filled with gunpowder -- were instrumental in preventing the British from shelling St. Petersburg in the Crimean War. The elder Nobel had his children educated by private tutors, and Alfred's teachers included the Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson . The munitions business collapsed with the end of the war, leaving the family impoverished, and for several years Nobel's mother was the family's primary breadwinner, working in a grocery store. As a young man, Nobel shared his father's interest in explosives, and sought a way to make the violent explosion of liquid nitroglycerin somehow more controllable.

In 1863 he succeeded in detonating nitroglycerin from a distance with a gunpowder charge, and two years later he patented the mercury fulminate detonator -- a crucial component for the development of high explosives. Nobel then established factories in Hamburg and Stockholm, and soon New York and California, but his name became controversial after numerous fatal accidents in the transit and use of his inherently unstable product, including an 1864 explosion that killed Nobel's brother, among other casualties. Understandably, Nobel sought to make a safer explosive, and in 1866, by absorbing nitroglycerin into kieselguhr (a porous clay), he invented dynamite. Its explosive yield was noticeably less than nitroglycerin, but packaged in sticks it was relatively impervious to accidental detonation when shaken or dropped, which made dynamite an immediately successful product. Nobel's subsequent inventions include gelignite (marketed as Nobel's Extra Dynamite), a lower-yield explosive made by absorbing nitroglycerin into wood pulp and sodium or potassium nitrate; and ballistite, a smokeless explosive combining nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.

Nobel was very withdrawn and single for his entire life, but he briefly dated Bertha von Suttner before she married. They remained friends and exchanged letters for decades, even after she became a prominent pacifist, writing against the war industry in her book Lay Down Your Arms. Nobel was plagued by migraine headaches, depression, occasional epileptic episodes, and angina -- for which he was prescribed the medicinal form of nitroglycerin, which he thought an amusing coincidence. He was a generous philanthropist, giving large sums for research at the Karolinska Institute, and underwriting some of Ivan Pavlov 's research. He held more than 350 patents, and by his death in December 1896 he was one of the world's wealthiest men, the owner of several companies which dominated the explosives industry. When his will was read three weeks after his death, newspapers reported the startling news that Alfred Nobel had left almost all of his fortune to a "fund for the advancement of science, the interest upon which is to be applied to the furnishing of prizes for competition open to the world" -- the Nobel Prizes.

His will established five awards, for accomplishments in chemistry, literature, medicine or physiology, peace, and physics, but his family contested the will in court, and the document -- written in Nobel's own hand, without legal counsel -- was a legal mess. He had entrusted the bulk of his estate to a foundation that did not yet exist, he did not explain the mechanism for determining prize-winners, and he had not discussed his plan with the groups assigned in his will to hand out the prizes -- the Norwegian Parliament (responsible for the Peace Prize); the Karolinska Institute (for the prize in medicine); the Swedish Academy of Sciences (for prizes in chemistry and physics); and the Swedish Academy (for the prize in literature). His own countrymen complained that it was immoral to hand a Swede's wealth to the world while many of Sweden's own people went hungry. It took several years to untangle the lawsuits and establish the prize protocols, and the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. His dynamite business, Nobel Industries, was an ancestor of today's Imperial Chemical Industries .

In 1968, Sweden's Central Bank financed a separate prize in economics, and several decades of Nobel Prizes in Economics have helped elevate the public perception of economics as a science. Father: Immanuel Nobel (munitions manufacturer, b. 24-Mar-1801, d. 1872) Mother: Karolina Andriette Ahlsell Nobel (grocer, b. 1805, m. 8-Jul-1827, d. 1889) Brother: Robert Hjalmar Nobel (b. 14-Aug-1829, d. 7-Aug-1896) Brother: Ludvig Emmanuel Nobel (b. 27-Jul-1831, d. 12-Apr-1888) Brother: Emil Oskar Nobel (b. 1843, 1864 explosion) Brother: Rolf Nobel (b. 1845) Sister: Betty Karolina Nobel (b.

1849) Girlfriend: Bertha von Suttner (peace activist, dated 1870s) Girlfriend: Sofie Hess Nobelprize.org - Nobel Prizes and Laureates Nobel Prizes and Laureates Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates Quick Facts Awards: 579 Prizes to 911 Laureates Prize categories: 6 Average age of a Laureate: 59 Age of youngest Laureate: 17 Age of oldest Laureate: 90 911 Nobel Laureates Awarded for "the Greatest Benefit to Mankind" Between 1901 and 2016, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 579 times to 911 people and organizations. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, and based on the fortune of Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and entrepreneur. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each Prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma, and a cash award.

A person or organization awarded the Nobel Prize is called Nobel Laureate. The word "laureate" refers to being signified by the laurel wreath. In ancient Greece, laurel wreaths were awarded to victors as a sign of honor. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 48 Prizes to 78 Laureates between 1969 and 2016. Facts and figures on the Prize in Economic Sciences 11 New Nobel Laureates 11 persons were awarded in 2016. There are now three new Nobel Laureates in Physics, three in Chemistry, on in Physiology or Medicine, one in Literature, one in Peace and two new Laureates in Economic Sciences. See a short presentation of them here. List of 2016 Nobel Laureates All Female Nobel Laureates The Nobel Prize and Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded to women 49 times between 1901 and 2016. What Do the Nobel Laureates Receive? The Nobel Diplomas Each Nobel Diploma is a unique work of art, created by foremost Swedish and Norwegian artists and calligraphers.

More about the Nobel Diplomas The Nobel Medals The Nobel medals show the image of Alfred Nobel on the face. The image on the reverse varies according to the institution awarding the prize. More about the Nobel Medals The Nobel Prize Amount The Nobel Prize amount for 2016 was set at SEK 8.0 million per full Nobel Prize. Until 1968, in principle more than three persons could share a Nobel Prize, but this never happened in practice.

Question: What nationality was Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel prize?
Answer: Swedish