People & History 3, Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prize
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Alfred Nobel, a weapons manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite, opened a newspaper one day in 1888 and read his own obituary. It was his brother Ludwig who had died, not Alfred, but the paper had made a mistake. Nobel was shocked that the newspaper called him "a merchant of death." The obituary went on to say that, thanks to Alfred’s inventions, men could now kill each other more quickly than ever before.
Seven years later, the year before he died, Nobel changed his will. The bizarre experience of reading about his own death may well have been the cause. Many believe that Nobel did not want to be remembered in a negative light, so he decided that his enormous fortune should be used to establish five prizes. He wrote in his will that these prizes were to be awarded to the people who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." These prizes, now worth almost $1.5 million each, are known as the Nobel Prizes.
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Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1833, the son of an engineer. His father built bridges and buildings. As part of his work, Alfred’s father experimented with different ways to blast rock. By 1842, the Nobel family was living in Russia, where Nobel’s father supplied armaments and explosive devices to the Russian army. By the time Nobel was 17, he could speak several languages, and while he enjoyed chemistry and physics, he also loved poetry and literature. Nevertheless, his father wanted him to focus on chemical engineering, so he sent Nobel abroad to study. While working in a private laboratory in Paris, Nobel met Ascanio Sobrero, the inventor of nitroglycerine, a liquid that is many times more explosive than gunpowder. Nitroglycerine, however, is quite volatile and so was not considered practical.
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When Alfred’s brother Emil and his father returned to Stockholm in the late 1850s, Alfred joined them and they built a small factory. There, Nobel focused his research on nitroglycerine. He thought that if he could stabilize it, it would be very useful in the construction industry. Several explosions occurred in the family’s factory as a result of Nobel’s experiments. One explosion, in 1864, killed Emil and several other people. Despite this tragedy, Nobel felt driven to continue his work. He discovered that by mixing nitroglycerine with silica, he could form it into rods that were not dangerous to handle. The rods could then be inserted into holes drilled into rock and detonated to break the rock up. He called this new form of explosive "dynamite." He also patented a device called a blasting cap. The blasting cap added a fuse to the stick of dynamite, allowing the dynamite to be ignited safely. Together, these innovations reduced the time and cost involved in blasting rock, building canals and bridges, and other construction work.
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Nobel also proved to be a very astute businessman. He built factories and laboratories in more than twenty countries and continued to invent. He had 355 patents to his name at the time of his death. Although he focused on explosives, he also patented formulas for synthetic leather and silk.
He also, however, remained passionate about literature and was deeply concerned about the problem of war. Nobel saw no conflict between his work and his interest in peace. Although dynamite was used as a weapon as early as 1870, Nobel had not invented it for this reason. He believed that a scientist’s discoveries were neutral: they could be put to either beneficial or harmful uses, but either way, the scientist was not responsible. He also believed that weapons could bring an end to war. If nations witnessed the horror caused by highly destructive weapons, he was convinced they would abolish their armies forever. Sadly, humans have proved Nobel wrong over and over again.
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Nobel’s inventions and business ventures made him a very rich man, but his wealth did not bring him happiness. He was plagued with health problems and died in 1896 of a brain hemorrhage, at the age of 63. He had amended his will a few times over the years, but the will he wrote one year before his death was the one that established the Nobel Prizes.
In this version, Nobel requested that his estate be used to award prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. In 1969, the Bank of Sweden added a prize for economics. Nobel’s will stated that all the prizes except the peace prize were to be awarded by committees based in Sweden. The peace prize was to be handled by a committee based in Norway, but he did not explain why. The prizes were to be given out at least every five years, and anyone in the world could be eligible for a prize, which consists of a medal, a diploma, and a cash reward. Each prize can go to a maximum of three people or to an organization. Those who receive the prizes are referred to as Nobel laureates.
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The youngest Nobel laureate was Lawrence Bragg. At the age of 25, he, along with his father, was awarded the physics prize for their work on the structure of crystals. The oldest recipient, also for physics, was an American, Raymond Davis Jr., who was 88 at the time. Although 768 individuals and 19 organizations have received the Nobel Prize, only 33 women have been Nobel laureates. Marie Curie is the sole woman to have received two Nobel prizes, one for physics and one for chemistry. She is also one of only two people to have been awarded prizes in two different fields. The Curie family is notable because Marie’s husband, Pierre, also received a Nobel Prize for physics, and their daughter, Irène, and her husband, Frédéric, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935.
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The Nobel Prizes have sometimes been controversial. Adolf Hitler forbade three German Nobel laureates to accept the Nobel Prize, although later, they were allowed to accept the diploma and the medal but not the money. And in 1958, a citizen of the Soviet Union, Boris Pasternak, accepted the Nobel literature prize but was later forced by his government to reject it. Two people have actually refused their prizes. One was the French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, who opted to refuse all official honors. The other was Le Duc Tho, a Vietnamese general and diplomat who was awarded the peace prize, along with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for their work on the Vietnam peace accord. Le Duc Tho refused to accept the prize, saying his country was still at war at that time.
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Despite these controversies, the Nobel Prizes are the most impressive in the world. It appears that Nobel succeeded in his plan: today, few people know, or would even guess, that the man behind these prizes created some of the most lethal devices of his time. But the world knows about the Nobel Prizes and their laureates, people who have given "the greatest benefit" to humanity.