Nobel Prize

Background

It has been argued that Nobel Prizes are modeled after Nobel's family, who encouraged both creativity and literacy. Nobel's father could generate new ideas, a hallmark of creativity, but he could hardly read or write. He made and lost several fortunes, experiencing both fame and bankruptcy with his family in the munitions business. His creative successes allowed funds for his family to travel and to uniquely educate his children.

Alfred Nobel had only one year of public education. He was educated at home by his mother and by well-known scientists of the time such as Nikoli Zinin. He showed interests in chemistry and proficiency with languages, mastering, in addition to his native Swedish, German, English, French, and Russian. Still, his academic training was surpassed by his business acumen.

In the mid-1860s, before Nobel's brothers left munitions to make their oil fortunes in Baku, Azerbaijan, Nobel was asked to work on the problem of handling nitroglycerin safely. He eventually invented and patented a detonator that was hailed as the most important discovery ever made in the principle and practice of explosives. He took out patents in England, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and Finland. This detonation system was used by the Central Pacific Railroad to blast across the Sierra Nevada. The safe ignition of nitroglycerin saved millions of dollars for the corporation, but nitroglycerin remained unstable and dangerous and reports of mishandling mounted. Explosions and deaths were reported from all over the world. Nobel returned to the chemistry lab after the death of his younger brother in 1865 from a factory explosion.

In 1867, Nobel invented dynamite, the handling of which was nearly foolproof and therefore much less dangerous. It was a powerful explosive that, with precautions, was safe to handle. Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was absorbed in kiesel-guhr, or diatomaceous earth, it could be shaped into sticks that, when combined with his detonation system, proved highly stable. The demand for his “safe” explosives exploded and he built factories around the world, adding to his ever-increasing fortune. He held more than 350 industrial and [Page 648]scientific patents, founded over 75 companies in more than 15 countries, and was one of the richest men in Europe.

Establishment and Awarding of Prizes

Before he died, Nobel composed several complicated, lawyer-crafted wills to distribute his enormous holdings. Yet shortly before he died, he created a new will that was critically brief—consisting of a single paragraph—ambiguous, and legally imprecise. This will named no apparent heir; instead, the largest portion of his estate was given to establish an annual prize for recent important discoveries that benefited humankind. It was unclear how to determine what it meant for a discovery to be “important” or whether there was a difference between a “discovery” and an “invention.” In his brevity, Nobel set the stage for countless court challenges between individuals and both academic and political institutions before even the first recipient could be vetted. The will indicated that one prize should go to the most important discovery in Physics, one to Chemistry, one to Physiology or Medicine, one to Literature, and one for the advancement of Peace. But the most vexing part of executing the will was that the estate was left to a foundation that had yet to be established.

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