Alfred Nobel & The Irony of the Nobel Peace Prize!

Alfred Nobel and the Irony of the Nobel Peace Prize

Many of you may have heard of the Nobel Prize, but do you know where the name comes from and the history of the award?

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish engineer, chemist and inventor, who, by the time he died in 1896, had 355 inventions attributed to his name.

Most of those inventions were those of an out and out pacifist and not what one would associate with someone who had a vision of the importance of peace.

During his time working at the family engineering works in Northern Germany, Alfred Nobel was responsible for the acquisition of the Bofors iron and steel mill, after which he became a major armaments manufacturer.

Bofors was to become a name synonymous with the 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun that became widespread during the Second World War, used both on land and also onboard naval ships.

One of Nobel’s inventions was ballistite, a smokeless military explosive similar to cordite that was used as a shell propellant. He also became heavily involved with another military explosive, cordite, though this led to major law case over his infringement of cordite’s patent.

However, the invention that Nobel became best known for was dynamite, the first stable form of nitro-glycerine.

For many years, nitro-glycerine, a liquid, was used for blasting, but it had one major problem. It was highly unstable and could be ignited purely by vibration, which resulted in many unfortunate accidents.

The company’s almost obsession with explosives ultimately cost Albert Nobel’s brother, Ludwig, his life in an explosion at the German factory, which provided a remarkable twist of fate.

The reporters mistakenly thought it was Alfred Nobel who had been killed in the explosion and Alfred was shocked to see his own obituary appear in the paper eight years earlier than it should have been.

He was even more shocked when he read the headline: The merchant of death is dead in a French newspaper.

So disconcerted about how he would be remembered when he was dead, Albert Nobel decided to change his will, several times, the last time just one year before he died in San Remo, Italy, in 1896.

In this final will, Nobel decided to leave 94% of his total assets to be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.

Clearly Nobel died a wealthy man as since then, the Nobel Prize for any of those five categories, plus Economics Sciences which was introduced in 1968, has been awarded 603 times and prize money given with the award has always come from the original Nobel Foundation fund.

Today, winners of the Nobel Prize today get 10 million Swedish kroner, which is approximately one million pounds.

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