Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896) | Museon Omniversum

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, where he began to study explosives. After a number of risky experiments, which killed his brother Emil and a number of workers, he succeeded in producing a stable explosive he called ‘dynamite’. He quickly made his fortune by selling it to mining companies and weapons manufacturers. Shocked to see himself described in the press as the ‘merchant of death’ because of the slaughter caused by his invention in wartime, he changed his will and set aside most of his estate to be used for what eventually became the Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.

The Nobel Peace Prize is presented each year on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, in the Norwegian capital, Oslo; the other Nobel Prizes are presented on the same day in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.