In 1851 at age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study, working for a short period under Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson, who designed the American Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. ![]() But Nobel became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commerciall explosive, as it had much more power than gunpowder. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of nitroglycerin, as it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to heat or pressure. There he met Ascanio Sobrero, who had invented nitroglycerin three years before. For 18 months, from 1841 to 1842, Nobel went to the only school he ever attended as a child, in Stockholm.Īs a young man, Nobel studied with chemist Nikolai Zinin then, in 1850, went to Paris to further the work. Now prosperous, his parents were able to send Nobel to private tutors and the boy excelled in his studies, particularly in chemistry and languages, achieving fluency in English, French, German and Russian. In 1842, the family joined him in the city. ![]() He invented the veneer lathe which allowed the production of modern plywood and started work on the torpedo. Alfred Nobel's interest in technology was inherited from his father, an alumnus of Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.įollowing various business failures, Nobel's father moved to Saint Petersburg in 1837 and grew successful there as a manufacturer of machine tools and explosives. Through his father, Alfred Nobel was a descendant of the Swedish scientist Olaus Rudbeck 1630–1702, and in his turn the boy was interested in engineering, particularly explosives, learning the basic principles from his father at a young age. The family lived in poverty, and only Alfred and his three brothers survived past childhood. The couple married in 1827 and had eight children. Life and careerīorn in Stockholm, Alfred Nobel was the third son of Immanuel Nobel 1801–1872, an inventor and engineer, and Karolina Andriette Ahlsell Nobel 1805–1889. His name also survives in companies such as Dynamit Nobel and AkzoNobel, which are descendants of mergers with companies that Nobel established. The synthetic element nobelium was named after him in the second half of the 20th century. Having read a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to the Nobel Prize institution. He owned Bofors, which he redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments. ![]() He held 355 different patents, dynamite being his foremost. If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.Īlfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist.
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