Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire, a scientist who cared for literature, an industrialist, who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he was often sad and remained alone. A lover of mankind, he never had a wife or family to love him; a patriot of his native land, he died alone in a foreign country. He invented a new explosive, dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of mining and road building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and to injure people.

He was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833 and moved to Russia with his parents in 1842. His father was an inventor, he invented the landmine and got plenty of money for it but then, quite suddenly went bankrupt. Most of the family went back to Sweden in 1859. Four years later Alfred came there too, beginning his own study of explosives in his father’s laboratory. He never studied at University, but studied privately and by the time he was twenty was a skillful chemist and excellent linguist having mastered Swedish, Russian, German, French and English. He was imaginative and inventive, but he had better luck in business and showed more financial sense. He was quick to see industrial openings for his scientific inventions and built up over 80 companies in 20 different countries.

His greatest wish was to see an end to wars, and thus peace between nations; and he spent much time and money working for the cause until his death in Italy in 1896. His famous will, in which he chose to provide prizes for outstanding work in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, economics, literature and promotion of world peace is a memorial to his interests and ideals. Nobel’s ideals which he expressed long before the threat of nuclear war have become the ideals of all progressive people of the world.

According to Nobel’s will the capital was to be safely invested to form a fund. The interest of this fund is to be distributed annually in the form of the prizes to those who, during the previous year, did the work of the greatest use to mankind within the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economics, literature and to the person who has done the most for brotherhood between nations, for the abolition or reduction of permanent armies and for the organisation and encouragement of peace conferences.

Since Nobel’s death in 1896 many outstanding scientists, writers and public figures from different countries have become Nobel Prize winners.

T. Polyakova, E. Sinyavskaya, English for Engineers, Moscow, 2006.