In April 1888, a mistakenly published obituary left Alfred Nobel to reflect deeply on his legacy and the impact of his scientific inventions. That moment would eventually inspire the creation of the world’s most coveted award – the Nobel Prizes. As the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace Prizes for this year this week, here’s a look at the remarkable story of how these iconic awards came to be. Alfred Nobel’s life Born in 1833 in the small town of Nobbelov, Stockholm, Alfred Nobel belonged to a well-educated, poor peasant family. Nobel’s grandfather was an army surgeon, and his father, Immanuel, went to technical school. Nobel spent many years shuttling between Sweden and St Petersburg, Russia, where his father had established an explosives factory in 1838 after going bankrupt in the year he was born. For most of his early years, he was privately tutored. He was quick to learn languages, including French, German, Russian and English. He loved poetry and was equally fond of the sciences. By the mid-nineteenth century, Nobel was eager to be on his own and moved to Paris. Taking after his father, he became an inventor himself, with his first patent being for a gas meter. “In 1866 came Nobel’s greatest invention: dynamite… By the middle of the nineteenth century, public works were expanding on an unparalleled scale: mining, harbors, road and bridge building, dam construction, railways, great canals such as the Suez (opened in 1869), and military works. Much of this crucially depended on the new dynamite’s power to move tons of earth, tunnel through mountains, dislodge or pulverize huge rocks,” notes academic Burton Feldman in The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige (2000). Nobel was also quick to patent his dynamite across Europe and in America, thus amassing a fortune. Although he never had a permanent home, he spent most of his later life in Paris. He never married either. ‘A war profiteer’ While he might have believed his contributions to the world—as a chemist, innovator, engineer, and businessman—were sufficient, a wrongful newspaper obituary was soon to burst his bubble. When reading his usual morning newspaper, Le Figaro, in April 1888, Nobel had the strange experience of encountering his own obituaries, many of which were hardly flattering. The media mistook the death of his brother Ludwig for his own. In The Nobel Prize and the Formation of Contemporary World Literature (2025), author Paul Tenngart cites the disturbing obituary. “A man who only with great difficulties can be seen as beneficial to humankind… died yesterday in Cannes. It was Mr Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.” “He was scathingly described as a war profiteer who became rich by inventing new ways to kill and maim people,” Feldman writes in his book The Nobel Prize. A changed will This “posthumous” reputation troubled Nobel; he did not want to be remembered that way. A year before his death in December 1896, at 63, he changed his will. “The new document stated that his sons- and daughters-in-law together would inherit only 3 per cent of his assets. Most of his considerable fortune would instead be used to fund an international prize for extraordinary achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace Work,” Tenngart notes. Nobel’s keen interest in scientific progress and literature was well known. He stipulated that the interest from his estate was to be divided into five equal parts: one to the person who made the most important discovery in Physics, one to the individual responsible for the most important chemical discovery or improvement, a third to the person who made a significant contribution in Physiology or Medicine, one part to the author of an outstanding literary work, and finally, one to the person who had done the most to foster fellowship among nations, reduce or eliminate standing armies, and promote peace. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901. A new prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1969. Every year, the new Nobel Prizes and laureates are announced and presented on December 10. Many have asked why Nobel did not set up the prizes during his lifetime. “But Nobel,” writes Feldman, “the man nobody knew, characteristically also chose to become the philanthropist nobody knew.” By arranging to be posthumously generous, he avoided any public intrusion into his fiercely guarded privacy.
