Alfred Nobel - Life and Philosophy
Alfred Nobel
Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates
Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates
Alfred Nobel - Life and Philosophy
A memorial address by Tore Frängsmyr *
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
26 March 1996
Probably no Swede is as well-known   throughout the world as Alfred Nobel - not our medieval saints,   nor even our contemporary sports heroes. At the same time, we   must admit that his renown is more indirect than direct. This   means that while the Nobel Prize is extremely well-known all over   the world, the person behind it remains relatively unknown.
Family tree.
Admittedly, quite a lot has been written     about Alfred Nobel, but a large part of this literature consists     of clichés. It is often a question of sentimental depictions     of a lonely millionaire who - despite his wealth - was unhappy or     at least deeply melancholic, emotionally attached to his mother,     and with a few heart-rending love stories behind him. This is not     altogether a false picture. Alfred Nobel was lonely and he was     clearly unlucky in love, but such accounts are not so     instructive. Romantic tales constitute a special genre, to which     I shall not attempt to contribute. Instead, I will focus on the     scientific and technical fields.
First, however, I would like to recount some important facts   about Alfred Nobel's life. He was born   in Stockholm in 1833 into a family of engineers. His family   was descended from none other than Olof Rudbeck, the best-known   technical genius of Sweden's 17th century era as a Great Power in   Northern Europe. Having gone through a recent bankruptcy, when   Alfred was five years old his father Immanuel Nobel moved to St.   Petersburg, where he started a mechanical workshop for the   manufacture of land mines. In 1842, when Alfred was nine years   old, the rest of the family also moved to St. Petersburg . By then his father's   fortunes had improved, enabling the family to live in high   bourgeois style. At the time, St. Petersburg was a world   metropolis, alive with scientific, social, and cultural life.   Immanuel Nobel's sons did not attend school, but were instead   educated at home by outstanding teachers at the level of   university professor. The instruction they provided focused on   both the humanities and the natural sciences. Aside from Swedish,   Alfred and his brothers were taught Russian, French, English and   German, as well as literature and philosophy. In the natural   sciences, they were guided by two professors of chemistry who   taught them mathematics, physics and chemistry. Considering the   specialty of his teachers, it was perhaps no coincidence that   Alfred took a liking to chemistry. He learned to conduct chemical   experiments, an activity that seemed to fascinate him from the   very beginning. Alfred spent his most important formative years   in the Russian capital. With his five languages, which he seemed   to have mastered well, he laid the foundation for the   cosmopolitan nature that would later become so prominent in his   life.
Nevskij Prospekt, the main street of St. Petersburg, in the 1870s.
During the years 1850-52, Alfred was allowed a few study-oriented   stays abroad. He spent one year in Paris with the famous chemist   Jules Pelouze, a professor at the Collège de France who had   just opened a private training laboratory. Pelouze, who   incidentally had been a good friend of the Swedish chemist   Berzelius, had also taught Nikolai Zinin, one of Alfred Nobel's   private teachers. During that year, Alfred completed his training   as a chemist. But somewhere around the same time was the   inception of what would become the greatest inventions of his   life. For it was then, if not earlier, that he must have heard   about the remarkable explosive called nitroglycerine. Strangely   enough, this has not been pointed out by many scholars, who have   dated the crucial moment 10 years later.
Here is the background. In 1847, in Turin, Ascanio Sobrero - an Italian   student of Pelouze - had discovered a new explosive that he   initially called pyroglycerine (later known as nitroglycerine).   However, Sobrero, both in letters to Pelouze and in a subsequent   journal article, issued a warning about the new compound, not   only because it had incredible explosive power, but also because   it was impossible to handle. Sobrero's discovery did not come as   a bolt from the blue. As early as the 1830s, Pelouze himself and   others had conducted important preliminary work by making   guncotton. Since Alfred was extremely interested in explosives -   it was of course a family interest - and since Pelouze had both   first-hand knowledge of how explosives were manufactured and was   familiar with Sobrero's discovery, Alfred must have learned about   nitroglycerine at that time. However, any excitement he might   have felt was immediately dampened by the difficulties of both   manufacturing and handling the new compound.
The end of the Crimean War (1856) spelled disaster for Immanuel   Nobel's factory, which had lived off the manufacture of war   materiel. The factory went bankrupt, and Alfred's parents and   their youngest son Emil moved back to Sweden. The three older   sons stayed in St. Petersburg to put the family affairs in order   and restructure the company. Faced with this situation, Alfred   and his brothers discussed various conceivable projects with   their former teachers. That was when Nikolai Zinin reminded them   of the potential of nitroglycerine. Professor Zinin is said to   have demonstrated the power of nitroglycerine by pouring a few   drops of the fluid on an anvil, striking it with a hammer, and   producing a loud bang. But only the liquid that came into contact   with the hammer exploded. The rest of the liquid was not   affected. The problem, as Sobrero had already realized, was   two-fold. First, it was difficult to manufacture the compound,   because at excessive temperatures the whole batch exploded.   Second, once manufactured, the liquid was equally difficult to   explode in a controlled fashion.
Nobel monument "Blown up Tree" on the bank of the River Neva, St. Petersburg.
During the years around 1860, Alfred     conducted repeated experiments involving great risks. First, he     succeeded in manufacturing sufficient quantities of     nitroglycerine without any mishaps. Then, he mixed nitroglycerine     with black gunpowder and ignited the mixture with an ordinary     fuse. After several successful explosions outside St. Petersburg     on the frozen Neva River, Alfred traveled back to Stockholm.     There, his father had begun similar experiments (though with less     success) after reading about Alfred's tests in his letters.     Immanuel Nobel even insisted that the new mixture was his own     idea, but he backed off from this assertion after a sharp letter     from Alfred that set matters straight in no uncertain terms.     Instead, he even helped Alfred apply for a patent in his own     name. In October 1863, Alfred Nobel was granted a patent for the     explosive that he aptly called "blasting oil."
With his first patent, Alfred had also   reached his first milestone. Although he was only 30 years old,   this was the start of an exciting adventure that would unfold   with great speed. During the following spring and summer, Alfred   continued his experiments. He soon obtained a new patent related   to the manufacture of nitroglycerine (using a simplified method)   as well as the use of a detonator, or what was called an "initial   igniter," in other words a hollow wooden plug filled with black   gunpowder (later called a "blasting cap"). The determination and   self-confidence that would later become more pronounced features   of Alfred's personality were already apparent. He wrote: "I am   the first to have brought these subjects from the area of science   to that of industry," and he successfully arranged a large loan   from a French bank.
* * *
The Söder tunnel in Stockholm was built with help of Alfred Nobel's blasting oil.
Around the same time, another personality     trait began to assert itself - the inventor also became an     entrepreneur. Alfred dealt with failures in the same resolute     manner as he did successes. In September 1864, a major explosion     at the Nobel     factory in Stockholm claimed the lives of Alfred's brother     Emil and four other people. Just one month later, Alfred -     resolutely and without sentimentality - founded his first joint     stock company. Despite the accident or perhaps because of it,     since no one could now doubt the explosive power of the new     compound, orders began rolling in. The Swedish State Railways     ordered blasting oil for use in building the Söder Tunnel in     Stockholm. A year later, in 1865, Alfred improved his blasting     cap (now made of metal rather than wood) which in principle is     still of the same type used today. He then left for Germany, set     up a company there and bought land outside Hamburg where     he built a factory. In the summer of 1866, Alfred Nobel traveled     to America. There he struggled against political bureaucracy,     popular fear of accidents caused by explosives and, not least,     dishonest business associates. In the end, he received patents,     formed companies and built factories there.
Despite slow communications, everything now happened very   quickly. Events literally assumed explosive force. While Alfred   was in America, his factory in Germany exploded. When he returned   to Germany in August, he had to supervise the clean-up of the   debris and plan a new building. At the same time, he continued to   brood over the safety problems of nitroglycerine and he conducted   new experiments. He realized that nitroglycerine had to be   absorbed by some kind of porous material, forming a mixture that   would be easier to handle. On the German moorlands very close to   where he was staying, he found a type of porous, absorbent sand   or diatomaceous earth known in German as Kieselguhr. When nitroglycerine was absorbed by Kieselguhr, it formed   a paste that was easy to knead and shape. This paste could be   shaped into rods that were easily inserted into drilling holes.   It could also be transported and subjected to jolts without   triggering explosions. It could even be ignited without anything   happening. Only a blasting cap would cause the paste to explode.   The disadvantage of this new substance was its somewhat reduced   explosive force - the Kieselguhr did not participate as an   active substance in the explosion. But this was the price one had   to pay. In short, that was how Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Incidentally, Alfred   himself coined the word dynamite from the Greek dynamis, meaning power. One of his German colleagues had proposed the term   "blasting putty" because it had the same consistency as putty.   But Alfred thought this sounded like something meant to be used   for blasting window panes, which was certainly not his intention.   In 1867, he was granted patents for dynamite in various   countries, notably Britain, Sweden and the United States.   Production was now set to begin on a large scale, and demand grew   rapidly. It was an era of large infrastructure projects like   railways, ports, bridges, roads, mines and tunnels, where   blasting was necessary. For example, dynamite was of vital   importance in the construction of the St. Gotthard tunnel through   the Swiss Alps in the 1870s.
In 1868, the year after the first patent for dynamite, Alfred   Nobel and his father were awarded the Letterstedt Prize by the   Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This prize, which Alfred   valued highly, was awarded for "important discoveries of   practical value to humanity." We can hear an echo of this wording   in Nobel's will, where he stated the criteria for awarding his   own prizes.
Alfred Nobel's traveling bag.
He had taken the decisive steps that led to     honor and fame. Let us pause a moment at the year 1873, when     Alfred Nobel was 40 years old. All these events had taken place     during the preceding 10 years. At age 30, Alfred had received his     first patent. Now, by age 40, he had already made his greatest     discoveries, he had built up a worldwide industrial empire, he     had become wealthy, and he had bought a large house in the center of Paris.     The foundation was in place. He later made new discoveries -     primarily blasting gelatin and ballistite - and his industrial     enterprises, as well as his fortune, grew. His distinguishing     quality was his versatility. He was an inventor, an industrialist     and an administrator. He had to safeguard his patent rights,     develop products, establish new companies, and conduct business     in five languages with the rest of the world - without the help     of a secretary and before the telephone and fax made people's     lives easier. He frequently traveled by train or boat, since this     was before the advent of the airplane. His factories exploded, he     had to withstand negative publicity campaigns, and he unmasked     deceitful business partners. He had to deal with all of this     himself. In addition, he seldom felt well - he viewed himself as     sickly and frail, often complaining of migraines, rheumatism and     an unsettled stomach. His life was hectic and stressful. In     letters he wrote from Paris, he complained of being constantly     hounded by people, which he described in his own words as "pure     torture." People are crazy, he wrote - they rushed in and out of     his office, everyone wanted to see him, and his presence was     required everywhere. But despite everything, he managed to cope.     In the role of the entrepreneur, he was unbeatable.
* * *
I would like to touch upon another     level of Alfred Nobel's personality, that of the humanist and     philosopher. We know that he had literary interests and ambitions.     He was an avid reader of fiction and wrote his own     dramatic works and poems. In addition, he was attracted to     philosophical issues. He read certain      philosophical works with such interest that he underlined     important passages. Among the papers that he left behind is a     black notebook on philosophy that his biographers have not taken     an interest in. Although not constituting profound original thoughts, these penciled notes reflect his serious interest in     philosophical questions. Nobel went through philosophy from     antiquity to modern times, pointing out what he perceived to be     vital issues. He made his own comments, which in a morose way     showed his detachment from the subject. He commented on Plato,     Aristotle and Democritus, but also on Newton and Voltaire as well     as contemporary biologists such as Darwin and Haeckel. Nobel     noted, for example, that it was unclear what caused people to     form a conception of a God: "Aristotle attributes it to fear,     Voltaire to the desire of the more clever to deceive the stupid."     He spoke with respect of the philosophical doubts of Descartes     and Spinoza, adding that doubt must surely be the starting point     for all philosophical thinking. Theories of knowledge were of     special interest to Nobel. Consequently, he returned several     times to Locke's thesis that all knowledge arises from sensory     impressions, declaring that the "brain is a very unreliable     recorder of impressions."
This led him to reflect further on the methodology of science and   to develop a line of reasoning that, aside from being inspired by   Locke's thesis, also seemed to have been influenced by Alexander   von Humboldt's theory of knowledge. Nobel wrote that all science   is built on observations of similarities and differences. He   continued:
"A chemical analysis is of course nothing other than this, and   even mathematics has no other foundation. History is a picture of   past similarities and differences; geography shows the   differences in the earth's surface; geology, similarities and   differences in the earth's formation, from which we deduce the   course of its transformations. Astronomy is the study of   similarities and differences between celestial bodies; physics, a   study of similarities and differences that arise from the   attraction and motive functions of matter. The only exception to   this rule is religious doctrine, but even this rests on the   similar gullibility of most people. Even metaphysics - if it is   not too insane - must find support for its hypotheses in some   kind of analogy. One can state, without exaggeration, that the   observation of and the search for similarities and differences   are the basis of all human knowledge."
Nobel could have completed this train of thought with Humboldt's   words that "from observation one goes on to   experimentation....based on analogies and inductions of empirical   laws." Nobel did not espouse any grand theory of knowledge, but   rather an empirical method. Alfred Nobel himself seemed to think   that he had accomplished quite a lot by applying this method in   his work.
Alfred Nobel also viewed himself with detachment, or shall we   say, philosophical skepticism. He often described himself as a   loner, hermit, melancholic or misanthrope. He once wrote: "I am a   misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw   loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more   efficiently than food." Even from this description, it is clear   that this misanthrope was also a philanthropist, or what Nobel   called a super-idealist. It was the idealist in him that drove   Nobel to bequeath his fortune to those who had benefited humanity   through science, literature and efforts to promote peace.
* * *
Villa Nobel in San Remo, Italy.
For Alfred Nobel, the idea of giving away     his fortune was no passing fancy. He had thought about it for a     long time and had even re-written his will on various occasions in order to     weigh different wordings against each other. Efforts to promote     peace were close to his heart, largely inspired by his contacts     with Bertha von Suttner     (herself a Nobel Peace     Prize winner in 1905 ). He derived intellectual pleasure from     literature, while science built the foundation for his own     activities as a technological researcher and inventor. On     November 27, 1895, Nobel signed his final will and testament at     the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris.
Alfred Nobel had many different homes during the final decades of   his life. In 1891, he had left Paris to live in San Remo, Italy,   after controversies with the French authorities. Four years   later, he purchased the Bofors ironworks and armaments factory in   Sweden and established his Swedish home at nearby Björkborn   Manor. He equipped all his residences with laboratories where   he could continue his experiments. He was apparently homesick for   Sweden but complained of the Swedish winter weather. His health   began to falter. He visited doctors and health resorts more   frequently, but never had time to heed their most important   advice - "to rest and nurse my health," as he put it himself. On   December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel passed away at his home in San   Remo.
The first Nobel Prize Award Ceremony was held in 1901 at the Royal Academy of Music, Stockholm.
Nobel's will was hardly longer than one ordinary page.     After listing bequests to relatives and other people close to him,     Nobel declared that his entire remaining estate should be used to     endow "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have     conferred the greatest benefit to mankind." His will attracted     attention throughout the world. It was unusual at that time to     donate large sums of money for scientific and charitable     purposes. Many people also criticized the international character     of the prizes, saying they should be restricted to Swedes. This     would not have suited the cosmopolitan Alfred Nobel. Some of his     relatives contested the will. Complicated legal and     administrative matters also had to be sorted out. All this took     time, but eventually it was all settled.
In 1901, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded. The donor himself   could hardly have dreamed of the impact that his benevolence   would have in the future.
* * *
The commemorative medal that has been     struck for this occasion -- designed by the artist Rune Karlzon     -- is intended to remind us of some of Alfred Nobel's various     activities. The back of the medal shows a tunnel blasted by     dynamite and a detonator or blasting cap. On the front of the     medal is a portrait of Nobel, with the Latin inscription Creavit et promovit, which can be translated "He created     and promoted." This sums up, in the briefest possible way, the     remarkable accomplishments of Alfred Nobel.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences'         commemorative medal in honor of Alfred Nobel and his         work.
Courtesy of The Royal Swedish Academy         of Sciences
Photo: Lars Falk
 
*Tore Frängsmyr holds a personal professorship in the   History of Science at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. He is   also director of the Center for History of Science at the Royal   Swedish Academy of Sciences and editor of Les Prix Nobel, the   yearbook of the Nobel Foundation, published since 1901. His books   include Linnaeus, the Man and his Work (1983, new edition 1994)   and Science in Sweden: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,   1739-1989 (1989).
 
For more information about the    Enlightenment, watch the virtual exhibition " The Enlightenment " at La Bibliothèque nationale de France.
 
First published 8 December 1998
 
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