Alfred Nobel The name of Alfred Nobel is now known primarily thanks to the prize he created. During his lifetime, his reputation was completely different: Nobel was called the "king of dynamite" and "mass murderer"

The personality of Alfred Nobel. Nobel Prize

Despite the development of dynamite, smokeless powder and the manufacture of weapons, Alfred Nobel was an ardent pacifist for most of his life. There is an assumption that Nobel, creating new types of explosives, secretly hoped to prevent war with their help: as if the hostilities would become so terrible that both the Entente and the Triple Alliance began to avoid escalating conflicts in every possible way.

Nobel's pacifist aspirations were strongly influenced by Bertha von Suttner , whom Alfred had met before her marriage. In 1876, Nobel was looking for a secretary and wrote an ad in the newspaper, but it was indecent for women to respond to such ads.

Bertha, who came from an impoverished noble family, at that time worked as a governess for the daughters of Baron Sutner. An affair began between her and Arthur Sutner, one of the Baron's sons , and the situation threatened to turn into a scandal.

Arthur was going to marry the governess, but the family did not allow him. Bertha decided to leave Austria, and therefore answered Nobel's announcement. After a short correspondence, the entrepreneur invited her to France by paying for a ticket.

Just in case, Nobel immediately clarified that Bertha would have to stay at the hotel until her rooms in the entrepreneur's mansion were ready. It is believed that he just wanted to take a closer look at the candidate, and before entering the mansion it would be easier for him to refuse her.

Nobel met Bertha at the train station, and his plans changed. According to the available information, he began to view her as his potential wife. But it didn't come to that: Berta honestly told him her story and never heeded Alfred's advice to forget about the past and switch to a new life.

Soon Nobel left on business in Stockholm, and when he returned, Bertha was no longer in Paris. She left a letter explaining that she was returning to Austria. Bertha received the money for a return ticket and to reimburse the amount spent by Nobel on her move by selling part of the family jewels.

In the future, Bertha will marry Arthur von Sutner, but their correspondence with Alfred will continue, and at times the Suttners will even rest on the entrepreneur's yacht. The topic of their conversations was the protection of the world from wars.

It was at the suggestion of Bertha that Nobel took part in many initiatives of pacifists: he donated money to them, in 1892 he participated in the international congress of pacifists, and also promised Bertha to establish a peace prize. Bertha von Suttner will become the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

At the congress of pacifists, Nobel stood out from the total number of those invited. He arrived only on the second day and did not support most of the general ideas, and in addition , he said that his factories would make wars useless faster than discussions and congresses.

Nobel did not support the idea of ​​general disarmament, but he treated international arbitration favorably and believed that in international conflicts it was necessary to introduce some rules from the dueling code.

Throughout his life, Nobel has never been married, and all his novels had a sad ending. Even during his studies in France, in the Pelusa laboratory, a young chemist fell in love with a pharmacy worker, but she soon died of tuberculosis. The circumstances of this story are not completely clear, and some authors even suggest that Alfred simply invented it.

There is another story about Alfred's first love: it was as if Anna Dezry became her , whom the young man met at the age of 17 at a party in St. Petersburg. This time, Nobel preferred another.

Another passion of the entrepreneur was Sophie Hess, whom he met in 1876 on the waters in Austria. The girl was much younger than Nobel and came from a strict family, but Nobel took advantage of his fortune in courtship, and soon even the principled Hess family advised Sophie to keep the guest in the city longer.

Two years later, Nobel moved Sophie to Paris, where he rented a house with a servant for her. Alfred dreamed of turning her into a socialite, hired teachers for the girl and advised her literature, but did not achieve success.

Hess used the connection with Alfred to her advantage: she could sell his letter for additional money, although the entrepreneur did not save on maintenance. She also did not hesitate to sign as "Madame Nobel", causing discontent with Alfred, who was suddenly congratulated on his marriage by acquaintances.

The Nobel brothers were unhappy with Alfred's passion, and Ludwig simply advised him to end this relationship. In 1891, Alfred got tired of Sophie and her lovers who came to the house he rented, and broke off relations with Hess, and agreed to pay her maintenance as a ransom .

After the death of the entrepreneur, Hess contacted his executors and demanded to redeem about 216 Nobel letters from her, threatening to publish them. The deal went through and the woman received 12,000 florins.

Alfred Nobel was a rather melancholic person all his life and put his factories and inventions first. He practically had no friends, and he did not look for them.

Nobel had a negative attitude towards alcohol and smoking. One of the richest men in Europe, he led a Spartan lifestyle, although his villas and mansions were works of art.

One more hobby of Nobel, besides chemistry, was literature. He imitated the poems of Shelley and Byron, wrote several novels and plays. His most famous play was "Nemesis", but the work was not liked by the Catholic Church, and most of the circulation was destroyed - only three copies survived. Alfred also owned an extensive library of technical literature and found time to read even during the most difficult experiments.

It is commonly noted that Nobel scrutinized the reports of his companies' activities and influenced management. True, information about dishonest partners, whose activities cost the entrepreneur dearly, casts doubt on the thoroughness of his control over affairs.

There is a famous myth that the Nobel Prize in mathematics does not exist because of the wife's lover who was a mathematician. In fact, Nobel in his will established prizes for inventions and discoveries that benefit everyone. Mathematics, in the mind of Alfred, was an abstract science and was of little interest to him.

At the same time, mathematics was originally on the list of sciences, but did not make it into the final version. Other versions can be found if desired. Some sources suggest that Nobel's feud with the mathematician Magnus Mittag-Leffler, who would have become the first contender for the prize in this area , is to blame . Some even remember Anne Desry, who married a mathematician.

The idea of ​​creating the Nobel Prize came to Alfred in 1888, nine years before his death. At the time, he was still living in France and was subjected to harsh press harassment. When Ludwig Nobel died, French newspapers did not understand the nuances and published Alfred's obituary with the headline "The Merchant of Death is Dead." Alfred realized how he would remain for the world after death, and decided to change that.


He had to destroy the old will and write a new one, which officially appeared in 1895. Nobel ordered to transfer all his property into securities and create a fund. Income from investments were to be given in the form of a bonus to those who brought the greatest benefit to humanity in a year.

According to the will, candidates were awarded in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, as well as literature. A separate item was the Nobel Peace Prize - unlike the others, it is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Swedish one. On this score, Nobel gave clear instructions, but the reasons for this decision are unclear.

Alfred Nobel died in 1896, leaving a fortune of 33 million crowns. Immediately after his death, disputes over the will began: most of Nobel's relatives did not consider it legal and were going to challenge it. Complicating the situation was the fact that Alfred's huge fortune had to be collected by selling his assets in different parts of the world.

This, in turn, meant the sale of shares in the Nobel Brothers Oil Production Partnership, which complicated the situation in the company of Emmanuel Nobel, Alfred's nephew. Despite everything, Emmanuel supported the will of a relative - mainly thanks to him, Nobel's will was not challenged.

The entrepreneur's executors had to face many difficulties, including attacks from the press and the Swedish parliament: the Nobel's decision seemed unfair to the deputies in relation to his native country. King Oscar II was against the award and even promised Emanuel Nobel that he would help get rid of the will, using inaccuracies in the document, but the entrepreneur's nephew refused.

The first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901, and from that moment the name of Alfred Nobel became associated not with dynamite and weapons, but with the encouragement of the development of science, culture and peacemaking initiatives. In addition to the award of his own name, Nobel left about 350 patents and literary works.