Business Leader, Engineer, Chemist, Scientist, Inventor(1833–1896)
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invented
dynamite and other explosives. He used his enormous fortune from 355
patents to institute the Nobel Prizes.
Synopsis
Born
on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, Alfred Nobel worked at his
father's arms factory as a young man. Intellectually curious, he went on
to experiment with chemistry and explosives. In 1864, a deadly
explosion killed his younger brother. Deeply affected, Nobel developed a
safer explosive: dynamite. Nobel used his vast fortune to establish the
Nobel Prizes, which has come to be known for awarding the greatest
achievements throughout the world. He died of a stroke in 1896.
Early Years
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, the fourth of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel's eight children. Alfred was often sickly as a child, but he was always lively and curious about the world around him. Although he was a skilled engineer and ready inventor, Alfred's father struggled to set up a profitable business in Sweden. When Alfred was 4, his father moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, to take a job manufacturing explosives. The family followed him in 1842. Alfred's newly affluent parents sent him to private tutors in Russia, and he quickly mastered chemistry and became fluent in English, French, German and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish.An Invention And A Legacy
Alfred
left Russia at the age of 18. After spending a year in Paris studying
chemistry, he moved to the United States. After five years, he returned
to Russia and began working in his father's factory making military
equipment for the Crimean War. In 1859, at the war's end, the company
went bankrupt. The family moved back to Sweden, and Alfred soon began
experimenting with explosives. In 1864, when Alfred was 29, a huge
explosion in the family's Swedish factory killed five people, including
Alfred's younger brother Emil. Dramatically affected by the event, Nobel
set out to develop a safer explosive. In 1867, he patented a mixture of
nitroglycerin and an absorbent substance, producing what he named
"Dynamite."
In 1888, Alfred's brother Ludvig died while in France. A French
newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary instead of Ludvig's,
and condemned Alfred for his invention of dynamite. Provoked by the
event and disappointed with how he felt he might be remembered, Nobel
set aside a bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes to honor
men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry,
medicine and literature, and for working toward peace. Sweden’s central
bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the Nobel Prize in Economics in
1968 in honor of Alfred Nobel.
He died of a stroke on December
10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy. After taxes and bequests to individuals,
Nobel left 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to 250 million U.S.
dollars in 2008) to fund the Nobel Prizes.
No comments:
Post a Comment