Alfred Nobel made a lot of money perfecting the blowing up of things. He came from a family of inventors. His father invented plywood. His brothers started the Russian oil industry. Alfred was not a happy man. He suffered from migraines, depression, and angina (for which he ironically took nitroglycerin). He was interested in a variety of subjects. He wrote poetry. He wrote a play called “Nemesis” which was about a family that kills an abusive father. (His family bought and destroyed 97 of the 100 copies because they thought it was blasphemous.) He funded Ivan Pavlov’s experiments. But he is most famous for inventing dynamite. He and his brothers were in the nitroglycerin business, but it was a dangerous business. The substance was so unstable that a brother was killed when a factory exploded. Another blew up two years later, but then Nobel came up with the formula for dynamite. He mixed nitroglycerin with a silicon-heavy soil to create a paste that was much more stable and usable. It was marketed as a better way to break up rocks and help with tunneling, not for warfare. He named it after the Greek word dynamus which means power. It made him wealthy and he went on to invent blasting caps and had 355 other patents. He left $4.2 million in his will to support peace and the arts and sciences. Not really because he felt guilty. In fact, he thought his explosive would make war obsolete. The money was divided between the Swedish Academy of Arts (chemistry and physics), the Caroline Institute (medicine), the Swedish Academy (literature), and the Norwegian Parliament (peace). The first awards were given on Dec. 10, 1901 – the fifth anniversary of his death.
– The Book of Amazing History pp. 273-275
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