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Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–1896) may be more remembered by most for the annual prizes he established than for the fact he invented dynamite, among other things.
A chemist, engineer, businessman and philanthropist, he held 355 patents, an astonishing number and a tribute to his inventive mind.
One patent, that for dynamite, turned out to result in both massive destruction and massive profits.
Nobel came to regret his greatest invention.
Yet some good came of it.
Winning a Nobel Prize has got to rank with one of highest achievements of any life.
Five are distributed each year: (in alphabetical order) for Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine.
The Prize comes with both a medal and cash.
The latter is determined by what remains in the fund.
Nobel originally funded the prizes with the equivalent of 265M $U.S. in today’s dollars.
One of the first altruistic winners was Niels Bohr, a Great Dane in the best sense. He won a Nobel Prize in 1922 in Physics.
