Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work
Alfred Nobel
Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates
Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates
Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work
by Nils Ringertz *
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 for blasting rocks.
Alfred Nobel.
Alfred's mother, born Andriette   Ahlsell , came from a wealthy family. Due to misfortunes in   his 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, Andriette 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.
Immanuel Nobel
Andriette Nobel
The naval mines designed by Immanuel Nobel were simple devices     consisting of submerged wooden casks 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 designing steam engines
Painting by Immanuel Nobel demonstrating his sea or naval mines to the Tsar of Russia.
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 sulfuric and     nitric acid. It was considered too dangerous to be of any     practical use. Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that     of gunpowder, 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.
Explosion in the laboratory in Stockholm.
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 kieselguhr 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.
Alfred Nobel's laboratory         in Bofors, Sweden.
The market for dynamite and detonating caps   grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a   very skillful entrepreneur and businessman. 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 different places in more than 20   countries. Although he lived in Paris much of his life he was   constantly traveling. Victor Hugo at one time described him as   "Europe's richest vagabond". When he was not traveling or   engaging in business activities Nobel himself worked intensively   in his various laboratories, first in Stockholm and later in Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland), Paris and Sevran (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 a very short time for Nobel 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 Your 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.
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.
Ragnar Sohlman.
* Nils Ringertz was born in 1932. He got an MD/PhD in medicine in 1960 and specialized in medical cell genetics. His main line of research has been nucleocytoplasmic signaling and digital imaging of cell structures using fluorescent probes. Nils Ringertz served as professor of medical cell genetics at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm in 1969-1993, was chairman at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) of the Medical Nobel Institute in 1977-1993, and chairman of the Medical Nobel Committee 1976-1999. From 1963 to 1993 he was editor of Experimental Cell Research (Academic Press). Nils Ringertz was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and served with a number of international scientific organizations. In 1994 he initiated the Electronic Nobel Museum Project (ENM) which led to the Nobelprize.org (NeM).  Nils Ringertz died in his home in Stockholm on June 8, 2002.
 
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