Alfred Nobel Biography

Business Leader, Inventor, Engineer, Chemist, Scientist (18331896)

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 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. Swedens central bank,
1

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.