"Blood Millionaire" or "General Benefactor": How Alfred Nobel Ruined His Brother

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Real personal tragedies are not uncommon in the history of science. To achieve their goals, scientists often take major risks and endanger not only themselves, but also those close to them. It is well known that the history of the most significant of the scientific awards is associated with the name of a man who thus tried to compensate humanity for the harm from his dangerous inventions. In fact, the dynamite created by Alfred Nobel served mostly peaceful purposes over the next 100 years. With its help, thousands of bridges, tunnels were built, and minerals were mined. In addition, the scientist paid for the creation of a "dynamite empire" with his brother's life.

Alfred Nobel was a hereditary inventor. Several generations of his ancestors, including the famous 17th century Swedish scientist Olof Rudbek, studied nature. The childhood of the future creator of the dynamite empire was spent in Russia, where his father very successfully organized the production of machine tools and explosives, by the way, it was in our country that Emmanuel Nobel invented plywood and worked on the creation of a torpedo. Only 4 out of 8 children survived in the family, and all the boys received an excellent education at home. Despite the fact that Alfred went to school for only a year and a half, he was fluent in six languages, was fond of physics and chemistry.

It is believed that it was in Russia that the formation of young Alfred Nobel as a scientist took place thanks to the leadership of Nikolai Nikolaevich Zinin. The famous Russian chemist worked with a talented young man for some time, and then took part in his fate, advising his parents to send the young scientist to study in Europe and America. During this trip in Paris, he met Ascanio Sobrero, the inventor of nitroglycerin. At that time, it was one of the strongest explosives, but the creator himself was against its widespread use because of the potential danger. For the rest of his life, the main developments of Alfred Nobel will concern the stabilization of this dangerous substance.

At 24, the young scientist filed his first patent. The object of the invention this time was a gas meter. By the way, we still use a roughly similar design of this device. In total, during his life, Alfred Nobel will become the author of 355 patents. In addition to explosives, which were the main topic of his research, we owe to this scientist the invention of many useful objects and improvements: a pipeline (this idea reduced the cost of oil production and transportation by 7 times), a gas burner, a water meter and a barometer, a refrigeration unit, a bicycle with rubber tires. (predecessors of rubber), an improved steam boiler and many others.

However, the most famous invention of Nobel was dynamite. After many years of painstaking research, the scientist managed to curb the destructive power of nitroglycerin by combining it with an inert porous filler. This mixture, equipped with a fuse and formed into small cylindrical cartridges, for many years has become an indispensable and reasonably safe way to produce controlled explosions.

However, the price for this invention was the life of one of the people closest to Alfred. In 1864, a building exploded in a family business for the production of nitroglycerin. Among the dead was the scientist's younger brother Emil. For the unmarried and childless Alfred Nobel, this was a huge personal tragedy that largely influenced his views. However, he continued his life's work and created a real empire for the production of explosives, without stopping research to stabilize them. Over the next several decades, he proved to be not only a talented inventor, but also a successful businessman. In total, Alfred Nobel opened 90 factories in different countries for the production of various types of dynamite and weapons.

When promoting his explosive product in new markets, Alfred always tried to prove the safety of its use. For this, numerous demonstrations and public experiments were carried out with dynamite and its components. However, public opinion in general remained adamant. Explosives were considered potentially hazardous. The numerous tragedies and accidents that occurred during the production of nitroglycerin were not so easy to forget. And the mass production of weapons could not be considered a good deed. Therefore, the Nobel family empire has earned a bad name in the world. Alfred realized this most clearly after the death of his older brother in 1988. Despite the fact that Ludwig Nobel was more involved in oil production in Baku, newspapers were full of catchy headlines about the deaths of "a millionaire in blood", "a merchant in explosive death" and "dynamite king". Most likely, the reason for this was a banal mistake of the newspapermen, who confused the two brothers, but such a gloomy hype around his name made a huge impression on Alfred. He wondered what kind of memory he would leave behind. These reflections led to results that are unique in their relevance to science.

It should be noted that despite the development and mass production of dynamite, new types of guns and smokeless powder, Alfred Nobel was a staunch pacifist. In 1889, for example, he attended the World Peace Congress and donated large sums for peacekeeping purposes. The explanation for this paradoxical situation probably lies in the personality of the famous scientist and his inner experiences. The result was the will of Alfred Nobel, written nine years before his death. The childless scientist transferred most of his fortune to trust in order to fund annual awards for outstanding scientific research, revolutionary inventions or major contributions to culture or the development of society. The Nobel Prizes are the most prestigious in the world today and attract huge attention every year.

Alfred Nobel died in 1896, and the first prizes were awarded at the turn of the new century in 1901. The idea of the brilliant scientist was fully successful. His name is really all over the world now associated with the development of science and peace initiatives. And thanks to dynamite, many thousands of important engineering objects and structures have been built in the world; it is still used in some places in the extraction of minerals. If we assess the significance of the peaceful application of this invention for humanity, then it will probably surpass the annually awarded prizes named after Alfred Nobel.

Many scientific discoveries are made by scientists at the cost of personal happiness. A striking example of this personal tragedy and great discoveries of the granddaughter of Academician Bekhterev..