HEROES OF SCIENCE
Meet the man behind the prestigious Nobel Prize and discover its explosive origins
Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, to engineer Immanuel Nobel and his wife Andriette. In 1842, Alfred and his mother moved to St Petersburg to join his father, who had moved to Russia to pursue a slew of successful engineering ventures, including providing materials for Russian military underwater mines. Once there, Alfred received a first-class education from private educators and showed an aptitude for the sciences, languages and literature.
To discourage a growing interest in poetry and literature, Alfred’s father sent him to travel across Europe and the US in the early 1850s to further his studies in chemical engineering. While in France, Alfred spent time at the Paris laboratory of chemist Théophile-Jules Pelouze beside an Italian chemist named Ascanio Sorero, who had been working with an explosive chemical called nitroglycerin. During Alfred’s travels, the Crimean War had caused Immanuel’s business to boom, but once the war ended it quickly went into bankruptcy, driving Immanuel to move his enterprise back to Sweden. Continuing with the family’s aptitude for working with explosives and bringing with him knowledge of a new explosive compound, Alfred moved back to Sweden in 1863 and began producing nitroglycerin for use in the construction industry. Unfortunately, an explosion in one of the nitroglycerin factories killed several workers, including Alfred’s brother Emil Nobel.
The loss of his brother compelled Alfred to develop a safer, more stable form of nitroglycerin, which became a moldable putty he named dynamite. The invention of dynamite sticks coincided with the development of the pneumatic drill and diamond-tip drilling. Alfred’s dynamite sticks quickly became popular because they could safely blast rock for tunnel and canal construction at a low cost. Along with the invention of dynamite, Alfred and the Nobel family created a whole host of different explosives, including dynamite gelatine and a smokeless version of gunpowder. However, his most memorable contribution to science has been through the work of others.
