Encyclopedia of World Biography

He was a Swedish chemist. (1833~1896)

He invented dynamite and other explosives, but he is best remembered for the Nobel Prizes, which he endowed with the bulk of his personal fortune.

His life.

• He was born in Oct. 21, 1833, in Stockholm.

• His father, impecunious in the Sweden of the 1839s, was more fortunate in Russia and by 1842 had established himself in a St.Petersburg engineering and armaments concern.

• In 1850, he traveled Western Europe and US for two years

o The Crimean war ends his journey.

• Nobel remained in Russia when his father returned to

• Stockholm in 1858.

• And he developed the chemical called nitroglycerin, which is used for gunpowders.

o The problem for this chemical was that this is so explosive, so it was quite hard to handle this chemical’s danger.

o However, Alfred Noel spilled in porous solids, including kieselguhr.

• This material reduced the blasting efficiency by a quarter, but this became much safer than before.

• This bomb is called dynamites.

• Patented in 1867,

• From 1865 to 1873 Nobel lived in Hamburg and then in Paris until 1891, when the Italian military adoption of ballistae made him unpopular there.

• Nobel’s will directed that the bulk of his estate, above 33 million kronor, should endow annual prizes for those who, in the preceding year, had most benefited mankind in five specified subjects

o Physics

o Chemistry

o Medicine

o Literature

o Peace

o A Nobel prize is one of the highest honors that an individual can receive.

Byers, Paula K. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Print.