Alfred Nobel – A man of contrast

Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; a scientist with a love of literature; an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he was often sad in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a wife or family to love him; a patriotic son of his native land, he died alone on foreign soil. He invented a new explosive, dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of mining and road building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellow men. During his useful life he often felt he was useless: “Alfred Nobel,” he once wrote of himself, “ought to have been put to death by a kind doctor as soon as, with a cry, he entered life.” World- famous for his work, he was never personally well-known, for throughout his life he avoided publicity. “I do not see,” he once said, “that I have deserved any fame and I have no taste for it.” Since his death, however, his name has brought fame and glory to others. His famous will, in which he left money to provide prizes for outstanding work in Physics Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals. And so, the man who felt he should have died at birth is remembered and respected long after his death.