Alfred Nobel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alfred Nobel
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Alfred Nobel
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Alfred Bernhard Nobel
21 October 1833 |
| Died | 10 December 1896 (aged 63) Sanremo, Italy
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| Occupation | Chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, philanthropist |
| Known for | Benefactor of the Nobel Prize, inventor of dynamite |
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Alfred Nobel (October 21, 1833 – December 10, 1896) was a Swedish scientist, engineer, and weapons manufacturer. He is well known for the invention of dynamite and for creating the Nobel Prize. Nobel left 31 million kronor (the Swedish currency) to the awards after his death on December 10, 1896.
A less well-known fact is that Alfred Nobel was also a playwright.
Contents
Early life and education
Alfred was the third son of Immanuel Nobel,an inventor and engineer, and Karolina Andriette Nobel (née Ahlsell 1805–1889). The couple married in 1827 and had eight children. The family was impoverished and only Alfred and his three brothers survived beyond childhood. Through his father, Alfred Nobel was a descendant of the Swedish scientist Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702), and in his turn, the boy was interested in engineering, particularly explosives, learning the basic principles from his father at a young age. Alfred Nobel's interest in technology was inherited from his father, an alumnus of Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Following various business failures, Nobel's father moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia, and grew successful there as a manufacturer of machine tools and explosives. He invented the veneer lathe (which made possible the production of modern plywood) and started work on the torpedo. In 1842, the family joined him in the city. Now prosperous, his parents were able to send Nobel to private tutors and the boy excelled in his studies, particularly in chemistry and languages, achieving fluency in English, French, German and Russian. For 18 months, from 1841 to 1842, Nobel went to the only school he ever attended as a child, in Stockholm.
Nobel gained proficiency in Swedish, French, Russian, English, German, and Italian. He also developed sufficient literary skill to write poetry in English. His Nemesis is a prose tragedy in four acts about the Italian noblewoman Beatrice Cenci. It was printed while he was dying, but the entire stock was destroyed immediately after his death except for three copies, being regarded as scandalous and blasphemous. It was published in Sweden in 2003 and has been translated into Slovenian, French, Italian, and Spanish.
Alfred devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of nitroglycerin (discovered in 1847 by Ascanio Sobrero, a fellow-student with Alfred under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Torino).
Several explosions were reported at their family-owned factory in Heleneborg, and a disastrous one in 1864 killed Alfred's younger brother Emil and several other workers.
Dynamite
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Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated with an absorbent, inert substance like kieselguhr (diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to manipulate, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as dynamite.
He next combined nitroglycerin with another high explosive, gun-cotton, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a still more powerful explosive than dynamite. Blasting gelatin, as it was called, was patented in 1876, and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate, wood-pulp and various other substances.
Some thirteen years later Nobel produced ballistite, one of the earliest of the nitroglycerin smokeless gunpowders. This powder was a precursor of cordite.
The Prizes
From the manufacture of dynamite and other explosives, and from the exploitation of the Baku oil-fields, in the development of which he and his brothers, Ludvig and Robert Hjalmar (1829-1896), took a leading part, he gained an immense fortune.
Then on November 27, 1895 at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after his death (to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality). He died of a stroke on December 10, 1896 at San Remo, Italy.
The first three of these prizes are for eminence in physical science, in chemistry and in medical science or physiology; the fourth is for the most remarkable literary work and the fifth is to be given to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international brother/sisterhood, in the reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace.
Relationships
Nobel traveled for much of his business life, maintaining companies in Europe and America while keeping a home in Paris from 1873 to 1891. He remained a solitary character, given to periods of depression. He remained unmarried, although he had a long-lasting relationship with Sofija Hess from Celje who he had met in 1876 in Baden near Vienna, where she worked as an employee in a flower shop. Their relationship lasted for 18 years.
Death
Nobel was accused of high treason against France for selling Ballistite to Italy, so he moved from Paris to Sanremo, Italy, in 1891. On 10 December 1896, he suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed to where he could speak only his native tongue. Nobel was surrounded by his paid servants at the time of his death who didn't speak his native tongue so he wrote, "how sad it is to be without a friend who could whisper a consoling word and would one day gently close one's eyes." He had left most of his wealth in trust, unbeknownst to his family, in order to fund the Nobel Prize awards. He is buried in Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm.
Monuments and legacy
The Monument to Alfred Nobel in Saint Petersburg is located along the Bolshaya Nevka River on Petrogradskaya Embankment. It was dedicated in 1991 to mark the 90th anniversary of the first Nobel Prize presentation. Diplomat Thomas Bertelman and Professor Arkady Melua were initiators of the creation of the monument (1989). Professor A. Melua has provided funds for the establishment of the monument (J.S.Co. "Humanistica", 1990–1991). The abstract metal sculpture was designed by local artists Sergey Alipov and Pavel Shevchenko, and appears to be an explosion or branches of a tree. Petrogradskaya Embankment is the street where Nobel's family lived until 1859.
Images for kids
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Front side of one of the Nobel Prize medals
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Alfred Nobel - Statue at the entrance of Villa Nobel, Sanremo
See also
In Spanish: Alfred Nobel para niños
