Homework Help: Social Studies: People: Alfred Nobel

The Nobel Prize is named after Alfred Nobel.

On October 21,1833, a brilliant man named Alfred Nobel was born in Sweden. He had four brothers. As a child, Alfred was very weak and frail. In 1842 his family moved to St. Petersburg to live with his father who is an architect and engineer. His father left Sweden because of his explosive experiments making noises and disrupting people. Alfred followed in his father's foot steps in experimenting explosives and became a chemist. In 1862 Alfred started to working with an explosive called nitroglycerin.

Alfred built a factory in 1866 to produce explosives with nitroglycerin and distribute around the world. There were many accidents with nitroglycerin in the factory. Since the explosives look harmless, no one bother to be careful when handling the product. During one accident, Alfred's younger brother, Emil died when his laboratory blew up. Alfred tried to make his explosives safer.

He invents dynamite, a safer explosive, by mixing nitroglycerin with diatomite, a type of earth formed by fossils crammed together. He acquired many patents from other countries. Alfred further invented "blasting gelatin" which was more powerful than nitroglycerin alone.

In 1888 one of Alfred's older brothers died. A French reporter mistook his brother as Alfred. The obituary in the newspaper called him the merchant of death because they thought that Alfred made his fortune by making and selling devastating weapons.

On December 10, 1896 Alfred died of cerebral hemorrhage. In his will it say that he gave all his fortune to a fund that will be used to honor human achievement physics and chemistry, physiology and medicine, peace, and literature. The prizes of physics and chemistry are awarded by Swedish Academy of Science, Physiology and medicine by the Caroline Medical Institute, and Literature by Academy in Stockholm. The Peace is awarded prize by a committee of five people elected from Norwegian Storting. All the prizes are known as The Nobel Prize.

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