I introduction

I INTRODUCTION
The Nobel Prize in Literature (Swedish: Nobelpriset i litteratur) is awarded annually by the Swedish Academy to authors for outstanding contributions in the field of literature. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which are awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine.[1] As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Swedish Academy.[2] The first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901 to Sully Prudhomme of France.[3] Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years.[4] In 1901, Prudhomme received 150,782 SEK, which is equivalent to 8,823,637.78 SEK in January 2018. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.[5]
As of 2022, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 119 individuals.[6] The youngest laureate was Rudyard Kipling, who was 41 years old when he was awarded in 1907. The oldest laureate to receive the prize was Doris Lessing, who was 88 when she was awarded in 2007. It has been awarded posthumously once, to Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931.[7] When he received the award in 1958, Russian-born Boris Pasternak was forced to publicly reject the award under pressure from the government of the Soviet Union. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre made known that he did not wish to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature,[8] as he had consistently refused all official honors in the past.[9] However the Nobel committee does not acknowledge refusals, and includes Pasternak and Sartre in its list of Nobel laureates.[10]
Seventeen women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the second highest number of any of the Nobel Prizes behind the Nobel Peace Prize.[11][12] There have been four instances in which the award was given to two people (1904, 1917, 1966, 1974). There have been seven years in which the Nobel Prize in Literature was not awarded (1914, 1918, 1935, 1940–1943). There have been three years for which the Nobel Prize in Literature was delayed one year: the prizes for 1915,[13] 1949[14] and 2018[15][16][6] were each awarded together with that of the following year in October of the following year. As of 2022, there have been 29 English-speaking laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature, followed by French with 16 laureates and German with 14 laureates and France has the highest number of Nobel laureates
Nobel Prizes, annual monetary awards granted to individuals or institutions for outstanding contributions in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, international peace, and economic sciences. The Nobel prizes are internationally recognized as the most prestigious awards in each of these fields. The prizes were established by Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, who set up a fund for them in his will. The first Nobel prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel�s death.
In his will, Nobel directed that most of his fortune be invested to form a fund, the interest of which was to be distributed annually "in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." He stipulated that the interest be divided into five equal parts, each to be awarded to the person who made the most important contribution in one of five different fields. In addition to the three scientific awards and the literature award, a prize would go to the person who had done "the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Nobel also specified certain institutions that would select the prizewinners. The will indicated that �no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize.�
Alfred Nobel
After his own experiments led him to the lucrative invention of dynamite, Alfred Nobel established a fund to reward other innovators �contributing most materially to the benefit of mankind.� The Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature, international peace, and economic sciences. The awards reflect Nobel�s interests; in addition to performing valuable chemical research, he spoke several languages, traveled widely, and wrote poetry.
In 1968 the Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, created an economics prize to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. This prize, called the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, was first awarded in 1969. The bank provides a cash award equal to the other Nobel prizes.
II NOBEL FOUNDATION
In 1900 the Nobel Foundation was established to manage the fund and to administer the activities of the institutions charged with selecting winners. The fund is controlled by a board of directors, which serves for two-year periods and consists of six members: five elected by the trustees of the awarding bodies mentioned in the will, and the sixth appointed by the Swedish government. All six members are either Swedish or Norwegian citizens.
In his will, Nobel stated that the prizes for physics and chemistry would be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the prize for physiology or medicine by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the literature prize by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, and the peace prize by a five-person committee elected by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament). After the economics prize was created in 1968, the Swedish Academy of Sciences has held the responsibility of selecting the winners of that award.
All the prize-awarding bodies have set up Nobel committees consisting of three to five people who make recommendations in the selection process. Additional specialists with expertise in relevant fields assist the committees. The Nobel committees examine nominations and make recommendations to the prize-awarding institutions. After deliberating various opinions and recommendations, the prize-awarding bodies vote on the final selection, and then they announce the winner. The deliberations and voting are secret, and prize decisions cannot be appealed.
III PRIZES
A prize for achievement in a particular field may be awarded to an individual, divided equally between two people, or awarded jointly among two or three people. According to the Nobel Foundation�s statutes, the prize cannot be divided among more than three people, but it can go to an institution. A prize may go unawarded if no candidate is chosen for the year under consideration, but each of the prizes must be awarded at least once every five years. If the Nobel Foundation does not award a prize in a given year, the prize money remains in the trust. Likewise, if a prize is declined or not accepted before a specified date, the Nobel Foundation retains the prize money in its trust.
The prize amounts are based on the annual yield of the fund capital. In 1948 Nobel prizes were about $32,000 each; in 1997 they were about $1 million each. In addition to a cash award, each prizewinner also receives a gold medal and a diploma bearing the winner's name and field of achievement. Prizewinners are known as Nobel laureates.
IV SELECTION OF PRIZEWINNERS
Nominations of candidates for the prizes can be made only by those who have received invitations to do so. In the fall of the year preceding the award, Nobel committees distribute invitations to members of the prize-awarding bodies, to previous Nobel prize winners, and to professors in relevant fields at certain colleges and universities. In addition, candidates for the prize in literature may be proposed by invited members of various literary academies, institutions, and societies. Upon invitation, members of governments or certain international organizations may nominate candidates for the peace prize. The Nobel Foundation�s statutes do not allow individuals to nominate themselves. Invitations to nominate candidates and the nominations themselves are both confidential.
Nominations of candidates are due on February 1 of the award year. Then, Nobel committee members and consultants meet several times to evaluate the qualifications of the nominees. The various committees cast their final votes in October and immediately notify the laureates that they have won.
V PRIZE CEREMONIES
The prizes are presented annually at ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden, and in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. In Stockholm, the king of Sweden presents the awards in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and economic sciences. The peace prize ceremony takes place at the University of Oslo in the presence of the king of Norway. After the ceremonies, Nobel Prize winners give a lecture on a subject connected with their prize-winning work. The winner of the peace prize lectures in Oslo, the others in Stockholm. The lectures are later printed in the Nobel Foundation's annual publication, Les Prix Nobel (The Nobel Prizes)
Some of the recipients
Recipent of the Nobel prize for chemistry
Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and also the first person to win the Nobel Prize twice. Curie coined the term �radioactive� to describe the uranium emissions she observed in early experiments. With her husband, she later discovered the elements polonium and radium. A dedicated and respected physicist, her brilliant work with radioactivity eventually cost her her life; she died from overexposure to radiation.
Recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics
Hayek, Friedrich August von (1899-1992), Austrian-born economist and Nobel laureate. Born in Vienna, von Hayek earned a doctorate at Vienna University in 1927 and spent some years in public service. He began a long academic career by holding the post of professor of economics and statistics at the University of London (1931-50); subsequently he was professor of moral and economic science at the University of Chicago (1950- 62). An economic traditionalist, von Hayek won a wide reputation with The Road to Serfdom (1944), in which he argued that governments should not intervene in the control of inflation or other economic matters. He retired in 1962 but was later appointed professor of economics at the University of Freiburg, in West Germany (now part of Germany). Returning to Austria in 1969, he became visiting professor at the University of Salzburg. In 1974 he and the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal received the Nobel Prize in economic science for their �pioneering work in the theory of money and economic luctuations and for their pioneering analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena.
The Recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature
Galsworthy, John (1867-1933), English novelist and playwright, who was one of the most popular English novelists and dramatists of the early 20th century. He was born in Kingston Hills, Surrey, and educated at Harrow School and the University of Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1890 but soon abandoned law for writing. Galsworthy wrote his early works under the pen name John Sinjohn. His fiction is concerned principally with English upper middle-class life; his dramas frequently find their themes in this stratum of society, but also often deal, sympathetically, with the economically and socially oppressed and with questions of social justice. Most of his novels deal with the history, from Victorian times through the first quarter of the 20th century, of an upper middle-class English family, the Forsytes. The principal member of the family is Soames Forsyte, who exemplifies the drive of his class for the accumulation of material wealth, a drive that often conflicts with human values. The Forsyte series includes The Man of Property (1906), the novelette �Indian Summer of a Forsyte� (pub. in the collection Five Tales,1918), In Chancery (1920), Awakening (1920), and To Let (1921). These five titles were published as The Forsyte Saga (1922). The Forsyte story was continued by Galsworthy in The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), which were published together under the title A Modern Comedy (1929). These were followed in turn by Maid in Waiting (1931), Flowering Wilderness (1932), and Over the River (1933), published together posthumously as End of the Chapter (1934). Among the plays by Galsworthy are Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Pigeon (1912), Old English (1924), and The Roof (1929). Galsworthy was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in literature.
The Recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics
Landau, Lev Davidovich (1908-68), Soviet theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, noted chiefly for his pioneer work in low-temperature physics (cryogenics). He was born in Baku, and educated at the universities of Baku and Leningrad. In 1937 Landau became professor of theoretical physics at the S. I. Vavilov Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow. His development of the mathematical theories that explain how superfluid helium behaves at temperatures near absolute zero earned him the 1962 Nobel Prize in physics. His writings on a wide variety of subjects relating to physical phenomena include some 100 papers and many books, among which is the widely known nine-volume Course of Theoretical Physics, published in 1943 with Y. M. Lifshitz. In January 1962, he was gravely injured in an automobile accident; he was several times considered near death and suffered a severe impairment of memory. By the time of his death he had been able to make only a partial recovery.
The recipient of the Nobel Prize for peace
Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and formerly the ruler of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.
The first to bear the title of Dalai Lama was Sonam Gyatso, grand lama of the Drepung monastery and leader of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect, who received it in 1578 from the Mongol chief Altan Khan; it was then applied retroactively to the previous leaders of the sect. In 1642 another Mongol chief, Gushri Khan, installed the fifth Dalai Lama as Tibet's spiritual and temporal ruler. His successors governed Tibet�first as tributaries of the Mongols, but from 1720 to 1911 as vassals of the emperor of China.
When the Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1950, they came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. He left the country after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1959 and thereafter lived in India. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading the nonviolent opposition to continued Chinese rule in Tibet. In 1995 the Dalai Lama came into conflict with Chinese authorities over the identification of a new Panchen Lama (the second most senior Tibetan religious authority). In 1996 he published Violence and Compassion, in which he and French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carri�re consider topics of political and spiritual interest.
Alfred Nobel Essay, Research Paper
Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1833.(Encarta) His father Immanuel Nobel was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. In connection with his construction work Immanuel Nobel also experimented with different techniques of blasting rock. Alfred’s mother, Andrietta Ahlsell came from a wealthy family. Due to misfortunes in the construction work caused by the loss of some barges of building material, Immanuel Nobel was forced into bankruptcy the same year Alfred Nobel was born. In 1837, Immanuel Nobel left Stockholm and his family to start a new career in Finland and in Russia. To support the family, Andrietta Nobel started a grocery store which provided a modest income. Meanwhile Immanuel Nobel was successful in his new enterprise in St. Petersburg, Russia. He started a mechanical workshop which provided equipment for the Russian army and he also convinced the Tsar and his generals that naval mines could be used to block enemy naval ships from threatening the city. The naval mines designed by Immanuel Nobel were simple devices consisting of submerged wooden casks filled with gun powder. Anchored below the surface of the Gulf of Finland they effectively deterred the British Royal Navy from moving into firing range of St. Petersburg during the Crimean war (1853-1856).
Immanuel Nobel was also a pioneer in arms manufacture and in designing steam engines. Successful in his industrial and business ventures, Immanuel Nobel was able, in 1842, to bring his family to St. Petersburg.
There, his sons were given a first class education by private teachers. The training included natural sciences, languages and literature. By the age of 17, Alfred Nobel was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German. His primary interests were in English literature and poetry as well as in chemistry and physics. Alfred’s father, who wanted his sons to join his enterprise as engineers, disliked Alfred’s interest in poetry and found his son rather introverted. In order to widen Alfred’s horizons his father sent him abroad for further training in chemical engineering. During a two year period, Alfred Nobel visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States.(Schuck p. 113) In Paris, the city he came to like best, he worked in the private laboratory of Professor T.J. Pelouze, a famous chemist. There he met the young Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero who, three years earlier, had invented nitroglycerin, a highly explosive liquid. Nitroglycerin was produced by mixing glycerin with sulfuric and nitric acid. It was considered too dangerous to be of any practical use.(Schuck p. 87) Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that of gun powder, the liquid would explode in a very unpredictable manner if subjected to heat and pressure.
Alfred Nobel became very interested in nitroglycerin and how it could be put to practical use in construction work. He also realized that the safety problems had to be solved and a method had to be developed for the controlled detonation of nitroglycerin. In the United States he visited John Ericsson, the Swedish-American engineer who had developed the screw propeller for ships. In 1852, Alfred Nobel was asked to come back and work in the family enterprise which was booming because of its deliveries to the Russian army. Together with his father he performed experiments to develop nitroglycerin as a commercially and technically useful explosive. As the war ended and conditions changed, Immanuel Nobel was again forced into bankruptcy. Immanuel and two of his sons, Alfred and Emil, left St. Petersburg together and returned to Stockholm. His other two sons, Robert and Ludvig, remained in St. Petersburg. With some difficulties they managed to salvage the family enterprise and then went on to develop the oil industry in the southern part of the Russian empire. They were very successful and became some of the wealthiest persons of their time. (Compton’s)
After his return to Sweden in 1863, Alfred Nobel concentrated on developing nitroglycerin as an explosive. Several explosions, including one (1864) in which his brother Emil and several other persons were killed, convinced the authorities that nitroglycerin production was exceedingly dangerous. They forbade further experimentation with nitroglycerin within the Stockholm city limits and Alfred Nobel had to move his experimentation to a barge anchored on Lake M?laren. Alfred was not discouraged and in 1864 he was able to start mass production of nitroglycerin. To make the handling of nitroglycerin safer Alfred Nobel experimented with different additives. He soon found that mixing nitroglycerin with silica would turn the liquid into a paste which could be shaped into rods of a size and form suitable for insertion into drilling holes.(Internet Site) In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite. To be able to detonate the dynamite rods he also invented a detonator (blasting cap) which could be ignited by lighting a fuse. These inventions were made at the same time as the diamond drilling crown and the pneumatic drill came into general use. Together these inventions drastically reduced the cost of blasting rock, drilling tunnels, building canals and many other forms of construction work. The market for dynamite and detonating caps grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a very skillful entrepreneur and business man.
By 1865 his factory in Kr?mmel near Hamburg, Germany, was exporting nitroglycerin explosives to other countries in Europe, America and Australia. Over the years he founded factories and laboratories in some 90 different places in more than 20 countries.(Encarta) Although he lived in Paris much of his life he was constantly traveling. Victor Hugo at one time described him as “Europe’s richest vagabond.” When he was not traveling or engaging in business activities Nobel himself worked intensively in his various laboratories, first in Stockholm and later in Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland), Paris (France), Karlskoga (Sweden) and San Remo (Italy). He focused on the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions, including such materials as synthetic rubber and leather, artificial silk etc. By the time of his death in 1896 he had 355 patents.(Compton’s)
Intensive work and travel did not leave much time for a private life. At the age of 43 he was feeling like an old man. At this time he advertised in a newspaper “Wealthy, highly educated elderly gentleman seeks lady of mature age, versed in
languages, as secretary and supervisor of household.” The most qualified applicant turned out to be an Austrian woman, Countess Bertha Kinsky. After working for Nobel for about two months she decided to return to Austria to marry Count Arthur on Suture. In spite of this Alfred Nobel and Bertha von Suttner remained friends and kept writing letters to each other for decades. Over the years Bertha von Suttner became increasingly critical of the arms race. She wrote a famous book, titled, “Lay Down Arms” and became a prominent figure in the peace movement. No doubt this influenced Alfred Nobel when he wrote his final will which was to include a Prize for persons or organizations who promoted peace. Several years after the death of Alfred Nobel, the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) decided to award the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize to Bertha von Suttner.
Alfred Nobel’s greatness lay in his ability to combine the penetrating mind of the scientist and inventor with the forward-looking dynamism of the industrialist. Nobel was very interested in social and peace-related issues and held what were considered radical views in his era. He had a great interest in literature and wrote his own poetry and dramatic works. The Nobel Prizes became an extension and a fulfillment of his lifetime interests.
Many of the companies founded by Nobel have developed into industrial enterprises that still play a prominent role in the world economy, for example Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Great Britain, Soci?t? Centrale de Dynamite, France, and Dyno Industries in Norway. Toward the end of his life, he acquired the company AB Bofors in Karlskoga, where Bj?rkborn Manor became his Swedish home.
Alfred Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896. When his will was opened it came as a surprise that his fortune was to be used for Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. The executors of his will were two young engineers, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist. They set about forming the Nobel Foundation as an organization to take care of the financial assets left by Nobel for this purpose and to coordinate the work of the Prize-Awarding Institutions. This was not without its difficulties since the will was contested by relatives and questioned by authorities in various countries.
But as we all know, the legacy of Alfred Nobel lives on today. The prizes named after him are still the most coveted prizes for the recipients in their respective fields. Everyone will remember Alfred Nobel as a daring pioneer who knew no limits.
Many of the new advanced scientific discoveries made in the last century were surely helped out by the work of Nobel. His Nobel prizes reward people of science and enable them to keep churning out new ways of accomplishing new feats that have never been attempted before

compasses the struggle associated with Nobel?s lifework. Alfred Nobel?s existence spanned many realms of thought and being. He was a scientist, a writer, a philosopher and humanitarian, and ultimately a philanthropist. It was probably this myriad of influences and inspirations that injected him into the core of friction between science and society, between knowledge and application. This work will elucidate Nobel?s motivation for creating the Nobel Prize with the assertion that the prize is an instrument used to reconcile the incongruity between science and humanity.

Alfred-Bernhard was born to his mother Caroline Andriette Nobel on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden.1 At birth he was a physically quiet and fragile infant, unlike his two older brothers, who were four and two years old respectively, and were quite energetic. Alfred?s mother nourished me to health and cared for him with her bracing maternal touch. In the words of Erik Bergengren, it took ?all her tender care to keep his flickering life flame burning. She alone believed and succeeded when all others had given up hope.?2
In the following years Alfred grew, although still not physically dynamic, his mind gained much strength in the form of knowledge and an interested insatiability. Alfred writes of his school terms in the following poem:
We find him now a boy. His weakness still makes him a stranger in the little world wherein he moves. When fellow-boys are playing he joins them not, a pensive looker-on; and thus debarred the pleasures of his age his mind keeps brooding over those to come.3
It is evident that Alfred felt he was physically incapable of joining with his classmates in their activities. Partly as a consequence of this Alfred gained the highest marks possible in the academic classes he took at school.2 His upbringing was an integral part of the formation of his inventive mind and logic as well as his persistence and endurance.
The role of Immanuel Nobel, Alfred?s father, was also crucial in molding Alfred into the man, inventor, and ingenious mind he became. It was almost as if the will and ability to invent and innovate was passed down through the generations amongst Alfred and his ancestry. His family was descended from none other than Olof Rudbeck, the best-known technical genius of Sweden’s 17th century era as a Great Power in Northern Europe.3 Keeping this in mind and the fact that he was born into a family of engineers, namely, his father, we can plainly see a major avenue of influence on Alfred Nobel and his inventive ways of industry.
Furthermore, having seen the source of his career choice we can now examine certain events that placed Alfred in the core of invention and industry.
A year before Alfred?s birth, the house he was soon to grace, lay in ashes, cradled by arms of smoke. This resulted in poverty for the family. Immanuel Nobel found himself at a loss for capital and submerged in debt and deprivation. He took a loan from his brother in-law and began inventing again only to be disheartened again by an explosion in his factory.3
Faced with the reality and responsibility of having to provide for a sizeable family Immanuel looked east, to Russia. ?Sweden now represented the scene of his bankruptcy and business losses, so he decided to leave his native land and search for his ?pot of gold? in Russia?.3 Alfred?s father eventually established a position in the Russian iron mills and was able to provide for private tutoring for his sons. ?Perhaps the only way to explain the breadth and profundity of Alfred?s knowledge is to call him largely self-taught.?3 Alfred was able to write in six different languages and took interest in various subjects of study; treating all of them with the utmost in significance. However, the episode of bankruptcy and paucity had left its blemish on Alfred?s disposition and psyche. As he matured he gained a certain reputation for being ?gloomy, sarcastic, and misanthropic?.2
In the struggle to give Alfred and his brothers the material necessities Immanuel, their father, also bestowed upon them the ?full benefit of?mechanical and technical knowledges?.4 There was always an inventive aroma in the air in the house of the Nobels?. Such an approach to life and existence instilled in Alfred Nobel a respect for science and a fascination with scientific quests.
In the mid 1800s Alfred began studying foreign languages. His ability to engage in discourse and write in multiple languages ?intensified his broad world outlook?4, and afforded him an opportunity to become more cultured and worldly. Alfred lived in Paris for some time studying French and looking to establish a career. Soon after he traveled to America to study Engineering under a Swedish engineer, Ericsson, however Alfred did not stay long enough to gain the title of engineer.3 Evlanoff and Fluor in discussing Alfred Nobel?s experience with engineering make a distinction between Nobel?s mentality and that of an engineer.
?Engineering could never have suited Alfred. He was no automaton of science, no robot duplicating technical operations of other men. Even at this time of youth, his scientific interests lay in working out his original ideas and schemes.?3
Evidently, through his lifetime Alfred was an inventor. He was motivated by novel and original thought and did not wish to be a simple machination of the industrial process. He wanted to discover, learn, and apply, not simply apply.
Along his travels and journeys Alfred realized that his primary interest was to be chemistry. He pursued a position in the free laboratory of the noted Professor Pelouze in Paris.4 In 1853 the Crimean war had begun. It was this war that first introduced Alfred to the realm of explosives. His father and brothers were manufacturing sea mines for the Russian Tsar, Nicholas I.4 It is very likely that at this point in his life Alfred felt a yearning to improve upon the primitive 500-year old gunpowder being used at that time.
Professor Zinin then introduced him, in 1855, to the ?? problem of nitroglycerine?. Many men, French, Swedish, Italian, and Russian cleared the way for Alfred Nobel?s work with dynamite. One of these men, Sobrero, is the one who actually discovered the compound nitroglycerine. But, ?as his biographers Molinari and Quartieri observe, he did not know how to make practical use of his discovery.?5 Sobrero had deemed nitroglycerine too dangerous for uses outside of medicine. However the onset of the Crimean War spurred Alfred?s interest in its use as an explosive. Events following the end of the war and death of Nicholas I led to more hardship for the Nobel family. However, Alfred?s love for invention and innovation had been instigated.
Following a return to his mother country Alfred immediately commenced on his journey of discovery and invented a detonator in which a primary small scale explosion leads to a larger second explosion.3 After the legal documentation had been taken care of and Alfred had received the patent for the detonator he and his father began work on the production of nitroglycerine at Heleneborg. At this time Alfred?s youngest brother Oscar-Emil also became involved with the work due to the need for cutting labor costs. At this point Alfred and his father were tragically reminded of the peril of nitroglycerine due to the Heleneborg disaster in which Emil was killed as well as some others.4 After this point both Alfred and Immanuel were emotionally traumatized. Soon after Emil?s death Alfred focused on the manufacturing methods of nitroglycerine and eventually created conditions in which it was rendered harmless. In speaking of Alfred Nobel?s response to the death of his brother Evlanoff states:
?He blamed himself with bitterness? He mourned that he had not been able to accomplish this sooner, so Emil need not have died. He could never forget the dreadful day of the Heleneborg disaster to the end of his life.?3
Following the Heleneborg disaster, Alfred experienced much success and fortune from his invention of dynamite. Immanuel Nobel passed away on September 3, 1872 and Alfred was left without his father.3 Such losses manifested themselves in Alfred?s psyche and disposition. Alfred wrote to Bertha von Suttner: ?There is nothing more that I love than to feel myself capable of enthusiasm. But this faculty was considerably diminished by my life experiences and my fellow men.?5 The remainder of Alfred?s life consisted of building upon his fortune and pursuing his love, invention, as well as other love interests. One of his most substantial contributions was indeed the Nobel Prize, which he established prior to his death and willed a large sum of money for before he died.
For Alfred Nobel, the idea of giving away his fortune was no passing fancy. He had thought about it for a long time and had even re-written his will on various occasions in order to weigh different wordings against each other. On November 27, 1895, Nobel signed his final will and testament at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris.5 The Nobel Prize was established through the wishes of Alfred Nobel for categories of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics (added in 1969).5 The prizes are awarded to those individuals who, in the opinion of a panel of judges, have made the most important discoveries, inventions, or improvements in these fields. The extent of practical usage is not necessarily a means of assessing the importance of the advances, however, prospective impact is always considered. Alfred?s main purpose behind the creation of the awards was to further promote peace and benefit humanity.
If the prizes established by Alfred Nobel?s contributions are examined from a psychological point of view one may trace the source of the prize in regards to why Alfred Nobel held the subject matter in high esteem. As far as the sciences are concerned it is quite simple to evaluate the source of Alfred?s love for scientific research and discovery. Quite evidently throughout his adolescence and manhood his father whom he loved a great deal and held in high regard stimulated his sense of inquiry and invention. Personally Alfred dedicated his career to studying chemistry in the laboratory; hence there is an award for chemistry. Alfred was also an individual who was quite logical and able to apply his knowledge in a pragmatic sense to further technology and improve many aspects of life; hence the award for physical science or physics. The award for medicine may have been influence by multiple sources. First of all, the individual who discovered nitroglycerine, Sobrero, was interested in medicine. In addition throughout Alfred?s life he had suffered from physical ailments and had been deprived the comfort of good health, vigor, and well-being. These experiences could have very probably manifested themselves through his need to create a Nobel Prize for Medicine.
In addition to an interest in the sciences, Alfred Nobel was an avid writer and skilled poet as well as a distinguished linguist. Such exposure to the humanities most likely influenced Nobel to want to create an award for achievements in writing and/or literature. Finally, the peace prize is said to be the offspring of the relationship between Alfred and Baroness Bertha von Suttner. Alfred hired Bertha as a secretary or sorts and began a relationship with her that would stay in his thoughts for the rest of his life. During their correspondence Bertha von Suttner became increasingly critical of the arms race. She wrote a famous book called Lay Down Arms and became a prominent figure in the peace movement.3 ?No doubt this influenced Alfred Nobel when he wrote his final will that was to include a prize for persons or organizations that promoted peace.?1 Several years after the death of Alfred Nobel, the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) decided to award the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize to Bertha von Suttner.4
Having discussed the subjects thought worthy by Nobel of awarding a Nobel Prize we may also look at one subject in particular which was neglected, mathematics. There are two primary theories as to why mathematics as a field may have been excluded from the list of those subjects to be rewarded by a Nobel Prize. The first theory, for which there is minimal historical evidence, states that Gosta Mittag-Leffler, a renowned mathematician, and Alfred Nobel both competed for the attention of a woman.6 The assertion is thus that Nobel, owing to some residual animosity, left math out of the list of subjects for which individuals were rewarded. A second more credible hypothesis states that at the time there existed already a well-known Scandinavian prize for mathematicians. If Nobel knew about this prize he might have felt more compelled to add a competing prize for mathematicians in his will.6 Nobel, an inventor and industrialist, did not create a prize in mathematics simply because he was not particularly interested in mathematics or theoretical science. His will speaks of prizes for those ?inventions or discoveries? of greatest practical benefit to mankind. Furthermore, mathematics is the base field. It is a gateway to understanding many of the other subjects listed by the Nobel Prize institution. Math is inherently present in Physics, Chemistry, Economics, and Medicine. Hence, Nobel may have deemed the presence of mathematics as unnecessary or understood and implicit.
?Alfred Nobel’s greatness lay in his ability to combine the penetrating mind of the scientist and inventor with the forward-looking dynamism of the industrialist.?1 Nobel was very interested in social and peace-related issues and held what were considered radical views in his era. He had a great interest in literature and wrote his own poetry and dramatic works. As we have seen through his lifetime and existence, the Nobel Prizes became an extension and a fulfillment of his lifetime interests, and a tool for penetrating the partition between the sciences and humanity.
Bibliography
1. Nobel e-Museum. Alfred Nobel-His Life and Work. 30 August 2000.
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