ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL

 

I and my life Vani with the Look Alike of Alfred Bernhard Nobel. A French newspaper wrongly reported that the merchant of death was dead on 10 December 1896.

When a newspaper mistakenly published the obituary of Mark Twain, the writer is said to have quipped: “Reports of my death are grossly exaggerated.” When a similar thing happened to Alfred Nobel, the creator of the prestigious Prizes, it became a life-changing event for him. Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, fell ill in France in 1888 and died. A French newspaper mixed up the two men and published Alfred’s obituary. In it, he was heavily criticized for his invention of dynamite.

Headlined "The merchant of death is dead", the obituary said: "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." It was true that Alfred invented the explosive – and made a considerable fortune from it. But he was shocked by what he read and certainly did not want to be remembered that way. He resolved that posterity (future generations) should embrace his name with a much more worthwhile activity.

So he set aside a large portion of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, which every year would honor outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and the pursuit of peace. Economics was added later.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, the fourth of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel's eight children. His father was an engineer and inventor. But he found it hard to make a living. That changed when he took a job manufacturing explosives with a firm in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Alfred, aged only four, moved there with the rest of the family. His father could now afford private tuition for his son who quickly demonstrated intellectual talents of the kind that make some parents proud and others to raise an astonished eyebrow. Soon Alfred mastered chemistry, which he continued to study for several years. As a teenager, he became fluent in English, French, German, and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish.

Eventually, the family moved back to Sweden where a tragic accident in 1864 had a profound effect on the then 29-year-old Alfred. Five people were killed in an explosion at the family’s factory, including Alfred’s younger brother, Emil. Shocked and deeply upset, Alfred resolved to use his knowledge of chemistry to develop a safer explosive. Three years later, he produced a mixture of nitroglycerin and an absorbent substance. Alfred took out patents on the new explosive, which he called “dynamite.”

He continued for the rest of his life to take out money-making patents on his creations and by the time of his death the number had risen to 355. Alfred’s wealth was also considerably enhanced by his 90 armaments factories and investment in oilfields along the Caspian Sea. Aged 63, he died of a stroke on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy, and left 94 percent of his total assets – 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to about 300 million US dollars today) to fund the Nobel Prizes.