Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist who is famous for two things: inventing dynamite and establishing the Nobel Prize.

Nobel observed that nitroglycerin, an explosive available at the time, was too volatile to handle safely and caused many accidental deaths. He discovered that by getting nitroglycerin to soak into diatomaceous earth (a kind of fine mineral powder), he could create a remarkably stable explosive compound, which he named dynamite. It was a huge boon for mining. Dynamite could be safely transported and placed, and could still be easily ignited from a long distance. However, military leaders saw these developments and determined that dynamite would also make an effective weapon. Nobel was a pacifist but agreed to sell dynamite to militaries hoping this powerful weapon would ultimately bring an end to all war. Around two decades later, after the use of dynamite had become widespread, his brother Ludvig died from illness. A French newspaper, mistakenly thinking it was Alfred who had died, published the headline “Le marchand de la mort est mort” (“The merchant of death is dead.”) His obituary was scathing, describing the terrible number of people who had been maimed or killed by Nobel’s invention. This was a wake-up call for Nobel, who realized what his legacy would be if he died at that moment. Before his death, he quietly changed his will to give the majority of his vast fortune to establish the Nobel Prize.

Actually, much of that story is false. It’s kind of a “neat morality tale” (Schultz 2013), but like many other stories about historical figures, it’s a little too neat of a narrative. The real story, as ever, is much messier and more ambiguous. Nobel was a munitions manufacturer his entire career. While dynamite was an effective tool for mining, Nobel’s work was primarily concerned with military applications. In fact, dynamite itself never did have many military applications, and was primarily used for mining, blasting tunnels for roads, and so on. At the same time, Nobel did believe that more powerful weapons could bring an end to war. He was idealistic in many ways. Nobel’s brother really did die in 1888, but there is no evidence that the headline, obituary, or even the newspaper L’Idiotie Quotidienne (which allegedly printed the headline) ever existed at all. It is commonly believed that something like this incident happened, in that a French newspaper probably misreported Nobel’s death in 1888. There is some vague secondhand evidence of this. It was reported in Le Figaro in April of that year that “newspapers” (none is specifically named) had misreported his death. However, it did not appear from my research that any of these newspapers have ever been identified (see LangLangC’s (2018) response to “Is there any record of the premature obituary of Alfred Nobel?”). Either way, if something like this happened, there is no evidence that it inspired or motivated Nobel to create the Nobel Prize. He himself never explained what made him decide to do it, although it is consistent with his passion for science and literature and his idealism.

References

Britannica (2023). Alfred Nobel. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Nobel

Schultz, C. (2013). Blame Sloppy Journalism for the Nobel Prizes. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/blame-sloppy-journalism-for-the-nobel-prizes-1172688/

Tägil, S. (1998). Alfred Nobel’s Thoughts about War and Peace. NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/alfred-nobels-thoughts-about-war-and-peace/

Wikipedia (2023). Alfred Nobel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel