DO YOU KNOW ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL?

"His name is associated with the betterment of mankind, yet he amassed great wealth selling weapons of war".

Alfred Bernhard Nobel a Swedish industrialist, chemist, engineer, philanthropist and
businessman. Nobel has been lauded for his humanitarian efforts, but he has also been called a merchant of death. Why? Because Nobel invented dynamite, and during his life he made a fortune manufacturing and selling lethal explosives.

After Nobel's death in 1896, however, a startling discovery was made. His will stipulated that $9 million be set aside and that each year the interest accrued be awarded to individuals who made noteworthy achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.

At first, people were perplexed. Why would an explosives entrepreneur be so eager to award benevolent and even peaceful attainments? Some assumed that Nobel was conscience-stricken over the destructive nature of his lifework. Others, however, came to fell that Nobel was working for peace all long. Indeed, it seems he believed that as weapons became more deadly, war would become less likely.


Popular quote of Nobel "I should invent a substance or machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would there by be made impossible forever"

What can say about this man....Is he an advocate of war or promoter of peace?

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER


Born in Stockholm , Alfred Nobel was the third son of Immanuel Nobel (1801–1872), an inventor and engineer, and Carolina Andriette (Ahlsell) Nobel (1805–1889).The couple married in 1827 and had eight children. The family was impoverished, and only Alfred and his three brothers survived past childhood. Through his father, Alfred Nobel was a descendant of the Swedish scientist Olaus Rudbeck (1630–1702),and in his turn the boy was interested in engineering, particularly explosives, learning the basic principles from his father at a young age. Alfred Nobel's interest in technology was inherited from his father, an alumnus of Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm .
Following various business failures, Nobel's father moved to Saint Petersburg in 1837 and grew successful there as a manufacturer of machine tools and explosives. He invented modern plywood and started work on the torpedo .In 1842, the family joined him in the city. Now prosperous, his parents were able to send Nobel to private tutors and the boy excelled in his studies, particularly in chemistry and languages, achieving fluency in English,
French, German and Russian.For 18 months, from 1841 to 1842, Nobel went to the only school he ever attended as a child, the Jacobs Apologistic School in Stockholm. As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist Nikolai Zinin ; then, in 1850, went to
Paris to further the work. There he met
Ascanio Sobrero, who had invented
nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin, as it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to heat or pressure. But Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive, as it had much more power than gunpowder. At age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study chemistry, working for a short period under inventor John Ericsson, who designed the American Civil War ironclad USS Monitor . Nobel filed his first patent, an English patent for a gas meter , in 1857, while his first Swedish patent, which he received in 1863, was on 'ways to prepare gunpowder'.The family factory produced armaments for the Crimean War (1853–1856), but had difficulty switching back to regular domestic production when the fighting ended and they filed for bankruptcy.In 1859, Nobel's father left his factory in the care of the second son, Ludvig Nobel (1831–1888), who greatly improved the business. Nobel and his parents returned to Sweden from Russia and Nobel devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of nitroglycerin. Nobel invented a detonator in 1863, and in 1865 designed the blasting cap.On 3 September 1864, a shed used for preparation of nitroglycerin exploded at the factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, killing five people, including Nobel's younger brother
Emil .Dogged and unfazed by more minor accidents, Nobel went on to build further factories, focusing on improving the stability of the explosives he was developing.Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, a substance easier and safer to handle than the more unstable nitroglycerin. Dynamite was patented in the US and the UK and was used extensively in mining and the building of transport networks internationally.In 1875 Nobel invented gelignite, more stable and powerful than dynamite, and in 1887 patented ballistite , a predecessor of
cordite .Nobel was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1884, the same institution that would later select laureates for two of the Nobel prizes, and he received an honorary doctorate from
Uppsala University in 1893.

This man was so passionate about the invention of explosives. He yielded his life to that and he achieved his aim.

What are you so passionate about? You have a mind that can create and invent things that will change and make life better for people.

"Your passion and diligence determines the standard of impact you make".

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