Alfred nobel biography religion in america

Given a first-class private education that focused on both the humanities and the sciences, Nobel was a competent chemist by the age of 16 and able to speak five languages fluently. Excelling in the sciences, he spent a year in Paris studying chemistry and then traveled to the United States to work under the famous Swedish engineer John Ericsson, who built the Civil War ironclad warship Monitor. Upon his return to St Petersburg, Nobel went to work for his father designing explosive mines at Nobel & Sons Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop.

Nitroglycerine, which had been created by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero and then abandoned because of its dangerous instability, became Nobel’s passion. He was well aware of the volatile hazard the chemical presented—his youngest brother, Emil, had died in a tragic nitroglycerine explosion—yet this did not dampen his interest in explosives. He patented his first major invention, a blasting cap or detonator, at the age of 30.

In 1866, Nobel fortuitously made the discovery that changed construction and destruction forever. He discovered that nitroglycerine—when absorbed to dryness in kieselgu

The Nobel prizes may be one of the most famous and prestigious awards in the world – but who was the man behind them? As I explain in my lectures about Alfred Nobel, the inventor and entrepreneur has left a lasting legacy with the annual prizes he established in 1901 for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace (the Nobel prize for economic sciences was established much later, in 1968).

But life wasn’t always so illustrious for Alfred Nobel.

According to Ingrid Carlberg’s biography of Nobel, he had a tough childhood in Stockholm. Not only was he poor but the boy who would become an esteemed scientist – holding 355 patents in his lifetime – was placed in a class for children with learning difficulties at school. Innovation may have run in the Nobel blood, however. Alfred’s father, Immanuel, was also an inventor, albeit less successful than his son would become.

Among Immanuel’s early creations was a backpack made from foul-smelling rubber that could also serve as a floating device for soldiers who needed to cross a river – and as a pillow on which to sit comfortably. But Immanuel’s inventions racked up huge debts and he fled from his creditors to Saint Petersburg in Russia – a place that would play an important role in his son Alfred’s later life.

Things improved for Alfred when the Nobel family moved to Russia, where he began working on developing explosives.

Explosive interests

Unfortunately, in Russia, Immanuel faced bankruptcy once again and returned to Sweden. Alfred and his father, alongside the Nobel family’s youngest son Emil, experimented with nitroglycerin in Stockholm.

The findings of these experiments made momentous contributions to industrialisation and medicine. However, there were many tragic events before Alfred found a way to make nitroglycerin safer to use by inventing dynamite in 1867.

In 1864, for example, Alfred’s younger brother Emil was killed in a nitroglycerin explosion at the family laboratory near S

List of self-identified nonreligious Nobel laureates

This list of nonreligious Nobel laureates comprises laureates of the Nobel Prize who have self-identified as atheist, agnostic, freethinker, or otherwise nonreligious at some point in their lives.

Many of these laureates earlier identified with a religion. In an estimate by Baruch Shalev, between 1901 and 2000, about 10.5% of all laureates, and 35% of those in literature, fall in this category. According to the same estimate, between 1901 and 2000, atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers won 8.9% of the prizes in medicine, 7.1% in chemistry, 5.2% in economics, 4.7% in physics, and 3.6% in peace.Alfred Nobel himself was an atheist later in life.

Shalev's book lists many Jewish atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers as religiously Jewish. For example, Milton Friedman, Roald Hoffmann, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Élie Metchnikoff, and Rita Levi-Montalcini are listed as religiously Jewish; however, while they were ethnically and perhaps culturally Jewish, they did not believe in a God and self-identified as atheists.

Physics

Chemistry

Physiology or Medicine

Economics

Peace

Literature

See also

Notes

References

Sir Alfred Nobel (October 21, 1833 – December 10, 1896) was a Swedish scientist, engineer, businessman, and philanthropist best known for inventing dynamite. Nobel paradoxically spent the majority of his adult life developing increasingly more powerful explosives while also penning poetry and theatre and pushing for world peace. Nobel left his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes for peace, chemistry, physics, medicine, and literature after reading a prematurely written obituary criticizing him for profiteering from the sale of guns and munitions. Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy, of a stroke. Despite having a few romantic relationships, he never married. He wrote a tragic drama called Nemesis shortly before his death. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded five years after his death, in 1901. Nobelium is a synthetic element named after him. In his honour, the Alfred Nobel Monument was erected in Saint Petersburg. In this article, let’s learn about Alfred Nobel, and Alfred Nobel inventions.

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Sir Alfred Nobel Birthplace & Early Life

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, as one of Immanuel Nobel's and Caroline Andrietta Ahlsell's eight children. Nobel's father, an inventor and engineer, went bankrupt the same year he was born due to financial tragedy and a fire that ruined much of his work. Due to these adversities, the family became impoverished, with only Alfred and his three brothers surviving childhood. Despite his illness, the young Nobel exhibited an interest in explosives, having inherited his father's passion for technology and engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Nobel was also a descendent of Olaus Rudbeck, a 17th-century Swedish scientist. Immanuel Nobel came to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1837, after failing at many business enterprises in Stockholm, and established himself as a successful mechanical engineer producing equipment for the Russian Army.