60 Fun Facts About Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel was born in 1833 in which city?

Stockholm was where the family's money ran out: his father went bankrupt in the year Alfred was born, and only four of the couple's eight children lived to adulthood.

Roughly how many patents did Alfred Nobel hold in his lifetime?

350 or so is right: the usual count is 355, registered in several countries, and the fortune they earned him is what paid for the prizes that carry his name.

Away from explosives, Alfred Nobel experimented with synthetic rubber, artificial leather and an artificial version of which fabric?

Silk was one of many sidelines he pursued in the private laboratories he set up wherever he settled; he also wrote poetry and, late in life, a play.

Which Swedish iron and steel company did Nobel own and turn into a major cannon manufacturer?

Bofors was his for only the last two years of his life, yet it became famous for an anti-aircraft gun used by both sides in the Second World War.

Nobelium, the element honouring Alfred Nobel, was officially credited to scientists from which country after a Swedish claim fell apart?

The Soviet Union's Dubna laboratory got the credit in 1992, but the Swedish team's name was kept because it had been in print for some thirty years.

Which body, of which Nobel was a member, chooses the laureates in physics and chemistry?

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Nobel had been a member since 1884, yet his will took everyone by surprise, and years of wrangling followed before the first prizes were given.

Nobel's father Immanuel invented which woodworking device that made modern plywood possible?

Immanuel also started work on the naval mine while running an explosives business in Russia.

In 1842 the Nobel family left Sweden to join Alfred's father in which city of the Russian Empire?

Saint Petersburg. Immanuel had gone ahead in 1837, and sent for his wife and sons only once his workshop supplying the Russian army was making money.

Which university gave Alfred Nobel, who never attended one, an honorary doctorate in 1893?

Uppsala. Nobel had at most 18 months of classroom schooling, as a small boy; private tutors and chemists' laboratories taught him the rest.

Nobel told a peace campaigner that what might end war sooner than her congresses?

Deadlier weapons. He argued that his factories might do more for peace than any congress: once two armies could wipe each other out in a second, civilised nations would recoil from war and send their troops home.

Which French author, an acquaintance of Alfred Nobel, is said to have called him "Europe's richest vagabond"?

Victor Hugo. Nobel met the novelist at Juliette Adam's literary salon, and the label fit: with factories in more than 20 countries, he was forever on the move.

In Paris in 1850 Nobel met which chemist, the man who had synthesised nitroglycerin?

Ascanio Sobrero. He thought his own discovery too dangerous ever to use and warned against it, which left the problem of taming it to Nobel.

In the United States, the teenage Nobel visited which inventor?

John Ericsson. The Swedish-born engineer went on to design the ironclad USS Monitor, and the US Navy ordered so many ships like it that a whole class of warship took its name.

Before any explosive, Nobel's first patent in 1857 covered a meter for measuring what?

Gas. None of his first three patents, for a gas meter, a liquid gauge and a barometer, was ever manufactured; his first explosives patent came in 1863.

The Nobel family factory produced armaments for which war before going bankrupt when it ended?

The Crimean War. When it ended the Russian army's orders stopped, and Immanuel Nobel, bankrupt for the second time, gave up and went home to Sweden.

An 1864 nitroglycerin shed explosion at Heleneborg killed which relative of Nobel's?

His younger brother Emil. The city then banned nitroglycerin work within its limits, so Alfred moved production onto a barge moored out on a lake.

Which Nobel invention reliably detonated nitroglycerin?

Blasting cap. A burning fuse alone would not reliably set off nitroglycerin, so Nobel used a tiny first explosion to shock the main charge into going off.

Nobel made his first dynamite by soaking nitroglycerin into which absorbent substance?

Kieselguhr. This crumbly earth made of fossil algae soaked up the liquid and turned it into a dough that could be shaped into sticks and handled safely.

Nobel's will gave doctors instructions for after his death because he had a horror of what?

Being buried alive. The will asked that his arteries be cut and that doctors confirm he was dead before his body was cremated, a wish he had voiced before.

The word "dynamite" comes from the Greek word for what?

Power. The name advertised the selling point: the new explosive hit far harder than the gunpowder that miners and tunnellers had relied on for centuries.

The 1867 patent text describes dynamite by what alternative name?

Nobel's Safety Powder. After a string of deadly nitroglycerin accidents he wanted the name itself to reassure buyers, but the punchier "dynamite" is the one that stuck.

Which jelly-like explosive, more powerful and stable than dynamite, did Nobel invent in 1875?

Gelignite. Dynamite's filler was dead weight, so Nobel swapped it for guncotton, an absorbent that explodes too, and got a stronger blast.

Ballistite, which Nobel patented in 1887, was one of the first examples of which kind of explosive?

Smokeless powder. Older gunpowder wrapped a firing line in smoke that hid the target and gave away the guns, so armies raced to buy the new kind.

Nobel's brothers Ludvig and Robert made a second family fortune in oil, mainly in which city?

Baku. The two had stayed behind in Russia to rescue the bankrupt family firm and ended up among the richest men of their day; Alfred took shares in their oil company.

About how many explosives and arms factories had Nobel's companies set up by the time he died?

About 90. They were spread over more than 20 countries, and Nobel, who never married, spent much of his life travelling between them.

According to a famous story, a French newspaper's premature obituary called Nobel what?

The merchant of death. The tale says reading it shamed Nobel into founding his prizes, but no copy of that obituary has ever been found, and some historians call it a myth.

The death of which family member in 1888 supposedly triggered the mistaken obituaries of Alfred Nobel?

His brother Ludvig. He died on the French Riviera in 1888, and at least one French paper is said to have mixed up the two Nobels and reported Alfred's death instead.

Nobel's will said the prizes should go to the worthiest candidates without regard to what?

Their nationality. "Whether or not they are Scandinavian", Nobel wrote, and critics at home attacked the clause as unpatriotic, wanting the prizes kept for Swedes.

At the Nobel ceremony in Sweden, who hands each laureate the medal and diploma?

The King of Sweden. Physicist Brian Schmidt gave exactly that answer when airport security asked who had given him the gold disc that showed up black on their scanner; he had taken his medal to show his grandmother.

Legend blames an affair with Nobel's wife for the missing prize in which field?

Mathematics. The tale has a mathematician stealing Nobel's wife, but it cannot be true: Nobel never married.

The 'ideal direction' clause in Nobel's will was used for years to deny the literature prize to which two authors?

Ibsen and Tolstoy. The early Academy read "ideal" as a lofty idealism that respected church, state and family; when Swedish writers protested, Tolstoy replied by declining any future prize.

Which institution set up the economics prize in Nobel's memory to mark its 300th anniversary in 1968?

Sveriges Riksbank. Sweden's central bank, the oldest still operating anywhere, pays the prize money itself, which is why the award officially carries the bank's name.

Nobel died in late 1896 at his villa in which town?

Sanremo. He spent his last five years there, and his test firings out to sea from a jetty drew so many complaints from the neighbours that he went looking for a range elsewhere.

Nobel gave money to the laboratory of which Russian physiologist, who later won a Nobel Prize himself?

Ivan Pavlov. Nobel was so taken with physiology that he set up his own experiments on blood transfusion; Pavlov won the medicine prize in 1904.

The very first Nobel Peace Prize was shared by Henry Dunant, the founder of which organisation?

The Red Cross. By then Dunant had gone bankrupt and spent decades in poverty and obscurity, until a journalist rediscovered him in a Swiss village in 1895.

Nobel's letters describing constant pain, migraines and fatigue have led some to suspect which condition?

His doctors at the time dismissed the complaints as hypochondria, deepening his depression.

Which future Nobel Peace laureate briefly worked as Nobel's secretary in 1876?

Bertha von Suttner. She answered his newspaper advert, left within weeks to marry, and spent the next twenty years urging him by letter to back the peace movement.

The Nobel Committee's own secretary called its failure to honour which peace campaigner its greatest omission?

Mahatma Gandhi. He was nominated five times, the last just days before his murder in 1948; that year the committee gave no prize, saying there was no suitable living candidate.

Nobel lost a long court battle in England claiming that which explosive was a copy of his ballistite?

Cordite. One of its inventors, Frederick Abel, was an old confidant who had been shown Nobel's work early, and the near-copy survived every appeal Nobel brought.

Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize in Physics cited his explanation of which effect rather than relativity?

The photoelectric effect. The committee found no 1921 nominee worthy, held the prize over, and handed it to Einstein a year late, in 1922.

Nobel's Paris mansion housed his laboratory, his library and a hothouse built for which flowers?

Orchids. Nobel loved the house on Avenue Malakoff so much that he kept it to the end of his life, years after a hostile press campaign drove him out of France.

Nobel left France in 1891 after being accused of high treason for selling ballistite to which country?

Italy. Nobel had offered the invention to France first and been turned down; when Italy bought it instead, the French press branded him a spy and his laboratory was shut.

Which US president won the 1906 Peace Prize for brokering an end to the Russo-Japanese War?

Theodore Roosevelt. He was in the White House at the time and gave his Nobel lecture only in 1910, the year after he left office.

Who won the very first Nobel Prize in Physics?

Wilhelm Röntgen. He won for the rays he called X because nobody yet knew what they were; many languages went on to name them after him instead.

Nobel Prize day, 10 December, is the anniversary of what?

Nobel's death. He died on 10 December 1896, and five years of wrangling over his will passed before the first ceremony could be held on that date.

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, the Peace Prize is presented in which capital city?

Oslo. Nobel's will handed this one prize to a committee chosen by Norway's parliament and never said why; Norway was then in a union with Sweden.

Which body awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?

The Karolinska Institute. Fifty of its professors vote as the Nobel Assembly, which was made a separate private body in 1977 so that its papers could stay sealed for 50 years.

The two engineers named as executors of Nobel's will set up which body to manage his fortune?

The Nobel Foundation. First, fearing the French state would lay claim to the fortune, Ragnar Sohlman, one of the two, went round Paris by carriage, gathered it up and had it sent home to Sweden.

Who was the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences?

Marie Curie. She was nearly left off the first: the 1903 physics nomination named only men until her husband Pierre, tipped off by a Swedish professor, asked that she be included.

As of 2025, who is the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize?

Malala Yousafzai. She was 17 when she shared the 2014 Peace Prize, two years after a Taliban gunman shot her on a school bus for demanding that girls be educated.

Which writer voluntarily refused the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Jean-Paul Sartre. He turned down every official honour on principle, saying a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.

Chemist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel medals in acid to hide them from the Nazis at which physicist's institute?

Niels Bohr. The jar of dissolved gold sat out the occupation of Copenhagen unnoticed, and after the war the metal was recovered and new medals were presented to the owners.

Which UN Secretary-General was awarded the 1961 Peace Prize posthumously?

Dag Hammarskjöld. He had died weeks earlier when his plane crashed on the way to ceasefire talks in the Congo; since 1974 the rules bar prizes for anyone already dead at the announcement.

Which pastor of the Swedish church in Paris, later a Peace Prize winner himself, led Nobel's memorial service?

Nathan Söderblom. He went on to lead Sweden's church and won the 1930 prize for rallying Christian churches across borders to work together for peace.

From 1865 Nobel ran a factory at Krümmel on the River Elbe, just outside which German city?

Hamburg. After a fatal blast got his nitroglycerin work banned from the Swedish capital, Nobel took the business abroad and lived beside this plant for eight years.

By tradition, a court accepted Sweden as Nobel's legal home because a man lives where he keeps which animals?

Horses. His Russian stallions were stabled at Björkborn Manor, his summer home, and the story goes that this helped put the will before a Swedish court, not a French one.

About how many Swedish kronor did Nobel's will leave to fund the prizes?

About 31 million. The will told his executors to turn the estate into safe securities, and only the yearly interest was to be handed out as prizes.

Which British prime minister won the Nobel Prize in Literature while in office in 1953?

Winston Churchill. The citation praised his histories and his oratory, and because he could not travel, his wife Clementine accepted the prize and read his speech for him.

Which singer-songwriter won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for his song lyrics?

Bob Dylan. He said nothing in public for days, skipped the ceremony, and sent a speech for the American ambassador to read at the banquet.

Late in life Nobel's doctors prescribed nitroglycerin, the explosive behind his fortune, for which ailment?

Heart disease. "Isn't it the irony of fate", Nobel wrote, noting that doctors called the drug Trinitrin so as not to scare the public; in the end a stroke killed him, not his heart.