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 of blasting rock.
Alfred's
mother, Andrietta Ahlsell came from a
wealthy family. Due to misfortunes in the 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, Andrietta 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.
The naval mines designed by Immanuel
Nobel were simple devices consisting of submerged wooden casks filled with gun
powder. 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. 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
sulphuric and nitric acid. It was considered too dangerous to be of any
practical use. Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that of gun
powder, 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.
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 silica 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.
The market for dynamite and detonating
caps grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a very
skilful entrepreneur and business man. 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 differe nt places in more than 20 countries. Although he lived in Paris much of his life he
was constantly travelling. Victor Hugo at one time described him as 'Europe's richest vagabond'. When he was not
travelling or engaging in business activities Nobel himself worked intensively
in his various laboratories, first in Stockholm
and later in Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland),
Paris (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 for Nobel for about two months 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 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.
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.
his signature
