AT Alfred NobelAlfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of manycontrasts. He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; a scientist withmade a fortune' but lived a simple life, and although cheerful in company he oftenaa patriotic son of his native land, he died alone on foreign soil. He invented a newparentslove of literature, he was an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. Heexplosive, dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of mining and building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellowmen. During hisuseful life he often felt he was useless. World-famous for his works, he was neverpersonally well known, for throughout his life he avoided publicity": "I do not see”.be once said, "that I have deserved any fame and I have no taste' for it”, but sincehis death his name has brought fame and glory to others.He was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833, but moved to Russia with hisin 1842, where his father, Emmanuel, made a strong position for himself inthe engineering industry, Emmanuel Nobel invented the landmine and made a lot ofmoneyfrom government orders for it during the Crimean War, but went bankruptsoon after Most of the family returned to Sweden in 1859, where Alfred rejoinedthem in 1863, beginning his own study of explosives in his father's laboratory. Hehad never been to school or university but had studied privately and by the timehe was twenty he was a skilful and excellent linguist, speaking Swedish, Russian, German, French and English. Like his father, Alfred Nobel was imaginative andinventive, but he had better luck in business, building up over eighty companiesin twenty different countries. Indeed his greatness lay in his outstanding abilityto combine the qualities of an original scientist with those of a forward-lookingindustrialist.But Nobel's main concern was not to make money or even to make scientificdiscoveries. Seldom happy, he was always searching for a meaning to life, andfrom his youth had taken a serious interest in literature and philosophy. Perhapsbecause he could not find ordinary human love - he never married - he came tocare deeply about the whole mankind. He was always generous to the poor: "I'drather take care of the stomachs of the living than the glory of the dead in the formof stone memorials”, he once said. His greatest wish, however, was to see an end towars and thus peace between nations, and he spent much time and money workingfor this cause until his death in Italy in 1896. His famous will, in which he leftmoney to provide prizes for outstanding work in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, literature and peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals.​