Today in history: Dynamite inventor is born
He later worked at his father's arms factory as a young man and, being intellectually curious, went on to experiment with chemistry and explosives.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden; the fourth of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel’s eight children.
Nobel’s father struggled to set up a profitable business in Sweden and later moved to St Petersburg, Russia, to take a job manufacturing explosives. The family followed him in 1842.
Alfred was sent to private tutors in Russia, and quickly mastered chemistry and became fluent in English, French, German and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish.
He later worked at his father’s arms factory as a young man and, being intellectually curious, went on to experiment with chemistry and explosives.
In 1864, a deadly explosion killed his younger brother. Deeply affected, Alfred developed a safer explosive called dynamite.
He used his vast fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes, which has come to be known for awarding the greatest achievements throughout the world.
He died of a stroke on December 10, 1896, in Italy. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel left 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to US$250 million in 2008) to fund the Nobel Prizes.
Information sourced from: The Biography.com website
