|
|||||
| Alfred Nobel was a truly remarkable man. He was born in Stockholm in 1833. His father was an inventor and an engineer and his mother came from a wealthy family. However, the family still had money problems. They moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. In St. Petersburg, Alfred's father, Immanuel made a better living. This enabled Alfred to have a first class education. He learned many languages fluently and became a worldly man. However, his father was not pleased with him because of his preference of poetry over engineering. So Alfred was sent abroad through many different countries. In Paris, he came to meet a man named Professor T.J. Pelouze. Within the private laboratory of Pelouze, Nobel studied an amazing chemical called nitroglycerine that Pelouze had come across three years earlier. Nobel became very interested in nitroglycerine and how it might be put into practical use for construction work. In 1853, Nobel became very involved in developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. He was successful in doing so, and in 1867 he patented his invention under the name of dynamite. Although Alfred Nobel developed a substance later used for destruction and war, he was a peaceful man. Towards the end of his life he knew a woman named Bertha von Suttner. She was a prominent figure in the peace movement of the time and wrote several books concerning it. When Nobel started the Nobel Prizes, many people say that the prize for peace was largely due to Suttner. Alfred Nobel died in 1896 with a total of 355 patents for his studies in nitroglycerine and other chemicals. | |||||
