Alfred Nobel Trivia
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60 free Alfred Nobel trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Alfred Nobel never went to university, spoke six languages, held 355 patents, ran more than 90 explosives factories and wrote a blasphemous verse tragedy that his executors burned. Then, in a one-page will his family knew nothing about, he gave 94 percent of his fortune to reward people who "conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." That contradiction is what makes him such good trivia. This Alfred Nobel trivia quiz runs 60 questions in two halves. The first covers the man: his inventor father in Saint Petersburg, the 1864 explosion that killed his brother, the invention and naming of dynamite, gelignite and ballistite, the Baku oil money, Bertha von Suttner, Sofie Hess, the villa in Sanremo and the famous premature obituary that may never have run. The second covers the prizes he created: the five original fields, who chooses each laureate, the December 10 ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo, the medals, the double winners, and the two people who said no. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's articles on Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prize, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question. Easy questions come first; the final third is for people who know their Sohlman from their Lilljequist.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Alfred Nobel was born in 1833 in which city?
Stockholm
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.
Q 02Roughly how many patents did Alfred Nobel hold in his lifetime?
350
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.
Q 03Away from explosives, Alfred Nobel experimented with synthetic rubber, artificial leather and an artificial version of which fabric?
Silk
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.
Q 04Which Swedish iron and steel company did Nobel own and turn into a major cannon manufacturer?
Bofors
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.
Q 05Nobelium, the element honouring Alfred Nobel, was officially credited to scientists from which country after a Swedish claim fell apart?
The Soviet Union
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.
Q 06Which body, of which Nobel was a member, chooses the laureates in physics and chemistry?
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
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.
Q 07Nobel's father Immanuel invented which woodworking device that made modern plywood possible?
The veneer lathe
Immanuel also started work on the naval mine while running an explosives business in Russia.
Q 08In 1842 the Nobel family left Sweden to join Alfred's father in which city of the Russian Empire?
Saint Petersburg
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.
Q 09Which university gave Alfred Nobel, who never attended one, an honorary doctorate in 1893?
Uppsala
Uppsala. Nobel had at most 18 months of classroom schooling, as a small boy; private tutors and chemists' laboratories taught him the rest.
Q 10Nobel told a peace campaigner that what might end war sooner than her congresses?
Deadlier weapons
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.
Q 11Which French author, an acquaintance of Alfred Nobel, is said to have called him "Europe's richest vagabond"?
Victor Hugo
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.
Q 12In Paris in 1850 Nobel met which chemist, the man who had synthesised nitroglycerin?
Ascanio Sobrero
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.
Q 13In the United States, the teenage Nobel visited which inventor?
John Ericsson
Q 21The 1867 patent text describes dynamite by what alternative name?
Nobel's Safety Powder
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.
Q 22Which jelly-like explosive, more powerful and stable than dynamite, did Nobel invent in 1875?
Gelignite
Gelignite. Dynamite's filler was dead weight, so Nobel swapped it for guncotton, an absorbent that explodes too, and got a stronger blast.
Q 23Ballistite, which Nobel patented in 1887, was one of the first examples of which kind of explosive?
Smokeless powder
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.
Q 14Before any explosive, Nobel's first patent in 1857 covered a meter for measuring what?
Gas
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.
Q 15The Nobel family factory produced armaments for which war before going bankrupt when it ended?
The Crimean War
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.
Q 16An 1864 nitroglycerin shed explosion at Heleneborg killed which relative of Nobel's?
His younger brother Emil
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.
Q 17Which Nobel invention reliably detonated nitroglycerin?
Blasting cap
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.
Q 18Nobel made his first dynamite by soaking nitroglycerin into which absorbent substance?
Kieselguhr
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.
Q 19Nobel's will gave doctors instructions for after his death because he had a horror of what?
Being buried alive
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.
Q 20The word "dynamite" comes from the Greek word for what?
Power
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.
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.
Q 24Nobel's brothers Ludvig and Robert made a second family fortune in oil, mainly in which city?
Baku
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.
Q 25About how many explosives and arms factories had Nobel's companies set up by the time he died?
About 90
About 90. They were spread over more than 20 countries, and Nobel, who never married, spent much of his life travelling between them.
Q 26According to a famous story, a French newspaper's premature obituary called Nobel what?
The merchant of death
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.
Q 27The death of which family member in 1888 supposedly triggered the mistaken obituaries of Alfred Nobel?
His brother Ludvig
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.
Q 28Nobel's will said the prizes should go to the worthiest candidates without regard to what?
Their nationality
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.
Q 29At the Nobel ceremony in Sweden, who hands each laureate the medal and diploma?
The King of Sweden
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.
Q 30Legend blames an affair with Nobel's wife for the missing prize in which field?
Mathematics
Mathematics. The tale has a mathematician stealing Nobel's wife, but it cannot be true: Nobel never married.