Alfred Nobel — chemist / inventor / industrialist with roots in the Russian Empire
Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1833 and moved to Saint Petersburg at the age of nine, when his father Immanuel established a machine works there supplying the Imperial Russian Navy. He spent his formative years in the Russian capital, educated by private tutors in chemistry, physics and languages — a scientific grounding considerably better than he would have received in Sweden at the time — and it was in Saint Petersburg that he first encountered nitroglycerine, through the chemist Nikolai Zinin.
The family business failed in 1859 and he returned to Stockholm with his parents. The work that followed was his own: the stabilisation of nitroglycerine into dynamite in 1867, the blasting cap, and eventually some 355 patents and an industrial group spanning several countries.
His Russian connection did not end there. When his brothers Robert and Ludvig developed the Baku oil fields in the 1870s, Alfred came in as a financing partner and shareholder in Branobel, which became one of the largest oil companies in the world. A substantial portion of the fortune he left was held in Russian oil.
In 1888 his brother Ludvig died at Cannes. Several newspapers confused the two and printed Alfred's obituary, condemning him as a man enriched by the manufacture of explosives. Reading his own death notice is widely held to have prompted the will he signed in 1895, which directed almost his entire estate to the endowment of prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.
He died at San Remo in 1896. The prizes were first awarded in 1901. Their endowment, and the education of the man who created them, both have roots inside the Russian Empire.
"Saint Petersburg from age nine, 1842-1859"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Saint Petersburg (Russia)
His formative education and a substantial part of his later fortune both sit inside the Russian Empire. The prize that carries his name was prompted by a premature obituary printed after his brother Ludvig died in 1888.
Moved to Saint Petersburg as a child when his father took up work there, and was educated by private tutors in the Russian capital until the family bankruptcy of 1859 returned him to Stockholm. He later joined his brothers' Baku venture as a financing partner and shareholder in Branobel.
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Saint Petersburg (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.