Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man
on many contrasts. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, he was
cheerful in company but said in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a
family or wife to love him. He was a patriotic son of his native land and
he died on foreign soil. He invented dynamite, to improve the peacetime
industries of road mining and road building, but he saw it used as a weapon
of war to kill and injured his fellow man. During his life he often felt he
was useless. He was world famous for his works he was never personally well
known, for throughout his life he avoid publicity. But since his death his
name brought fame and glory to others.
He was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833 but moved to Russia with
his parents in 1842, where his father made a strong position for himself in
the engineering industry. Most of the family returned to Sweden in 1859,
where Alfred rejoined them in 1863, beginning his own study of explosions
in his father’s laboratory. He had never been to school or university but
had studied privately and by the time he was twenty he was a skillful
chemist and excellent linguistics, speaking Swedish, Russian, German,
French and English. He builds up over 80 companies in 20 different
countries.
But Nobel’s main concern was never with making money on scientific
discoveries. In youth he had taken a serious interest in literature and
psychology. He was always generous to the poor. His greatest wish was to
see an end of wars and thus peace between nations. His famous will, in
witch he left money to provide prizes for outstanding work in Physics,
Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace.
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