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The Nobel prizes are based on the will of Alfred Nobel (1833–1896), a cosmopolitan Swedish inventor and industrialist who made a fortune from making dynamite and other explosives. First awarded in 1901, the Nobel prizes are given in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace (Box 1). They now serve as landmarks for 100 years of scientific, literary and political developments. It is appropriate, therefore, to reflect on the circumstances that surrounded their introduction1,2,3.

Nobel's early life

Alfred Nobel (Fig. 1) was born in Stockholm on 21 October (see Timeline). His father, Immanuel Nobel (1801–1872), was an engineer and inventor, who constructed bridges and built houses in Stockholm. Alfred's mother, Andriette Ahlsell, came from a wealthy family. Owing to financial misfortunes — which included the loss of three barges that were carrying building materials during the construction of a bridge near Stockholm — Immanuel Nobel was forced into bankruptcy in the same year that Alfred was born.

Figure 1: Alfred Nobel (1833–1896).
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© The Nobel Foundation.

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Timeline | Alfred Nobel (1833–1896)

In 1837, Immanuel Nobel left Stockholm and his family to start a new career in Russia. To support the family (which at the time included three young sons), Andriette Nobel started a dairy and greengrocery store, which provided a modest income. Meanwhile, Immanuel Nobel was successful in his new enterprise in St Petersburg, Russia. He started a mechanical workshop that provided equipment for the Russian army, and he also convinced Tsar Nicholas I and his generals that naval mines could be used to prevent enemy ships from threatening the city. The mines that were designed by Nobel were simple devices and consisted of submerged wooden casks, which were filled with gunpowder. 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 steam engine design.

In 1842, Nobel took his family to St Petersburg, where 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 main interests were English literature and poetry, as well as chemistry and physics. But his father, who wanted his sons to become engineers in his business, disliked Alfred's interest in poetry and thought his son was too introverted. So, to widen Alfred's horizons, Immanuel 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 the most — he worked in the private laboratory of Professor Théophile Jules Pelouze. And in the United States, Nobel visited John Ericsson, the Swedish–American engineer who had developed the screw propeller for ships.

Alfred Nobel and nitroglycerine

In 1852, Nobel was asked to come back and work in the family business, which was booming because of its deliveries to the Russian army. In 1856, however, the financial situation changed completely as, with the end of the Crimean War, the military cancelled their orders for equipment. So, Nobel and his father began to look for new products.

It was probably through his chemistry teachers — Professors Yuli Trapp (1809–1882) and Nikolay N. Zinin (1812–1880) — that Alfred Nobel first heard about nitroglycerine (pyroglycerine). This explosive substance had been discovered some years earlier by a young Italian chemist, Ascani Sobrero, while he worked in Pelouze's laboratory in Paris. Encouraged by Zinin, Alfred Nobel began to experiment with nitroglycerine as an explosive in construction work, and his father took an active part in these studies. However, Immanuel Nobel and his company were once again facing bancruptcy, so Immanuel, his wife and the youngest son, Emil, returned to Sweden in 1859.

Alfred stayed on in St Petersburg, in an apartment that he shared with his brothers. He turned the kitchen into a laboratory and undertook very dangerous experiments to find out how to manufacture nitroglycerine in large quantities. In the winter of 1862–1863, Alfred Nobel and his brothers carried out test explosions on the ice of the river Neva, and developed naval mines. But his brothers, Ludvig and Robert, soon focused on reconstructing the family business and became very wealthy after successfully developing the oil industry in the southern part of the Russian Empire.

In 1863, Alfred joined his family in Stockholm and continued to experiment with nitroglycerine. Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that of gunpowder, the liquid would explode in an unpredictable manner if subjected to heat and pressure. Nobel solved this problem with his first important invention — the blasting cap (Fig. 2). This was a small charge of gunpowder (soon replaced by mercury fulminate), which was ignited by lighting a fuse. (Fulminate is a salt or ester of fulminic acid — an isomer of cyanic acid — that explodes in a violent flash.) The explosion of the primary charge then triggered the explosion of nitroglycerine.

Figure 2: Nobel's detonators.
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a | Early type. b | Later type, either inserted into drilling hole and filled with nitroglycerine (left), or a cartridge with nitroglycerine and detonator (right). © The Nobel Foundation.

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In 1863, Alfred Nobel obtained his first Swedish patent on the use of the mercury percussion detonator of nitroglycerine (blasting oil) as an explosive in construction work. One of the first main applications was in blasting a railroad tunnel that joined the main north/south railway line in Stockholm. However, several explosions — which included one in 1864 that killed Nobel's brother Emil and several other people — convinced the authorities that the use of nitroglycerine was exceedingly dangerous. In Stockholm, experimentation with nitroglycerine was forbidden within the city limits, and Alfred Nobel had to move his studies to a barge, which was anchored on Lake Mälaren, close to Stockholm.

However, Alfred was not discouraged and in 1864 he was able to start mass production of nitroglycerine. During a brief visit to Paris, he also managed to obtain a large loan from a French bank. He founded nitroglycerine companies in Sweden (1864), Norway (1865), Germany (1865) and the United States (1866). But, after several accidents in Europe and the United States, the authorities introduced regulations that restricted the possibilities of manufacturing and transporting explosives.

The invention of dynamite

To make the handling of nitroglycerine safer, Alfred Nobel experimented with different additives. While working on a raft which was anchored on the river Elbe outside Hamburg, he found that mixing nitroglycerine with silica (Kieselguhr, a diatomous sand) would turn the liquid into a paste, which could be shaped into rods of a size and form that was suitable for insertion into drilling holes. In 1867, he patented this material under the name 'dynamite'. To be able to detonate the dynamite rods, he had to modify his original blasting cap.

Nobel made these inventions 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 Nobel also proved himself to be a skilful entrepreneur and businessman. Over the years, he founded factories and laboratories in 90 different places in more than 20 countries. He was constantly travelling, and Victor Hugo, the famous French writer — who met Nobel in one of the literary 'salons' that were common at the time — described him as “Europe's richest vagabond”. The admiration was mutual: Nobel, who spoke French 'à la perfection', admired French literature in general and the literary works of Hugo in particular.

When he was not travelling or engaging in business activities, Nobel worked intensively in his various laboratories — first in Stockholm and later in Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland), Sevran (France), San Remo (Italy) and Karlskoga (Sweden) — and focused on the development of explosives technology. By replacing silica in dynamite with nitrocellulose, another explosive, he created blasting gelatine (1875), which was safe to handle and had increased explosive power. He also developed a smokeless gunpowder called ballistite (1887) for military use. In addition, Nobel worked hard on other chemical inventions, which included materials such as synthetic rubber and leather, and artificial silk. By the time of his death in 1896, he had 355 patents.

Many of the companies founded by Nobel have developed into industrial enterprises that still have a prominent role in the world economy. These include Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in the UK, Société Centrale de Dynamite, France, and Dyno Industries in Norway. Towards the end of his life, Nobel acquired the company AB Bofors in Karlskoga, where Björkborn Manor became his Swedish home.

Intensive work and travel did not leave much time for a private life. At the age of 43, Nobel 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 weeks, she decided to return to Austria to marry Count Arthur von Suttner. In spite of this, Nobel and Bertha von Suttner remained friends and wrote letters to each other for decades. Over the years, Bertha von Suttner became increasingly critical of the arms race. She wrote a famous book, 'Die Waffen Nieder' (Lay Down Your Arms), which was published in 1889, and she became a prominent figure in the peace movement. Several years after the death of Nobel, the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) decided to award the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize to Bertha von Suttner.

Nobel's will

Alfred Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, on 10 December 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 out to form the Nobel Foundation (Box 2) 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 problems.

The fortune that was left by Nobel consisted of shares in companies in many countries. The first problem facing the executors of the will was to decide the true domicile of Nobel. He was born in Sweden (and had retained his Swedish citizenship) and lived there until the age of nine. But then he lived in Russia, Germany and Scotland, before settling in Paris, where he lived for more than 20 years. Nobel was forced to leave France for Italy, because the French military authorities objected to his 'unpatriotic' selling of the patent for ballistite to the Italian government. Then, towards the end of his life, Alfred Nobel bought a small factory and mansion at Karlskoga in Sweden, and he was planning to retire there and breed horses. However, he spent only the summer months at his new home.

According to French law at the time of Nobel's death, the domicile was where you kept your horses. The executors therefore decided to move all financial assets to Karlskoga. This was a complicated operation, which involved, among other things, packing shares and other financial documents into suitcases and sending them as registered luggage by train from Paris to Karlskoga. At the local district court of Karlskoga, the will was contested on formal grounds as there was no existing organization that could receive the funds and administer distribution of the fortune. This problem was later solved by the creation of the Nobel Foundation (Box 2). The children of Alfred Nobel's brothers objected to not having been included among the beneficiaries. Moreover, King Oscar of Sweden (and Norway) disliked the idea that the prizes could be given to foreigners and objected to the peace prize being awarded by a committee which was elected by the Norwegian Storting. Some members of the institutions that were designated by Nobel to select the prize-winners hesitated to take on their task as long as the legal battles with the relatives continued. It took the executors several years of negotiations to solve these problems, but in 1900, the Nobel Foundation was formed to serve as a recipient of the funds that were created by the sale of Nobel's financial assets.

The Nobel prizes

What induced Alfred Nobel to create the Nobel prizes, and why did he select physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace? The time in which Alfred Nobel lived was an optimistic one, and many of his contemporaries believed in peaceful competition. Moreover, they felt that science would improve the standard of living for everybody. With the institution of the Nobel prizes, Nobel hoped to make it possible for scientists, authors and champions of peace to become financially independent so that they could carry on with their work.

Nobel's choice of prize areas reflects his interests during his lifetime. Physics and chemistry are the easiest to understand, as Nobel's own work on explosives can be described as applied chemistry and physics. It is also understandable that Nobel included literature, because he was an avid reader and had an impressive library. At times, he even seriously contemplated leaving chemical engineering to become a writer. His interest in peace work reflects the influence of Bertha von Suttner. Nobel donated money to von Suttner's peace conferences but continued his work with explosives, the rationale being that they were so terrible when used on the battlefield that they would stop all wars forever. He never lived to witness the First World War and see how wrong he was.

What about the prize in physiology or medicine? Alfred Nobel was in ill health all his life, constantly overworked, and at times suffered from melancholy and loneliness. His interest in physiology and medicine, however, was genuinely scientific. In his laboratory notebooks, he often made notes about ideas that should be tested “to mitigate or cure disease”. He was interested in anaesthesia, and listed substances and alcohols that might be useful for this purpose. He also contemplated intravenous injection of anaesthetic agents as an alternative to ether and chloroform, which were commonly used at the time. Blood transfusions were tried in many hospitals during Nobel's time, but with mixed results. In Nobel's view, the main difficulties with blood transfusion was that blood changes very rapidly outside the body and that blood, therefore, had to be directly transferred from the donor to the recipient. Tubes that were made of molten borax and sodium were particularly suited for such transfers, as they would cause minimum damage to the blood corpuscles. This was, of course, before the problem of blood groups had been solved, and consequently nothing came of Nobel's ideas.

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. Being fluent in several languages, and having started companies in many countries and constantly travelling, he had an international outlook which was far removed from the nationalism that prevailed in his days. Indeed, he specified in his will that, “It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not”. Undoubtedly, he wanted the prizes to promote science, literature and peace work, but it is possible that this was also done for peace of mind — as by creating the prizes, he could compensate for the fact he was making money on explosives which were developed not only for civilian, but also for military use.