Children's Phonetic Famous Person Stories: Nobel

Author: Zhong Lei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-01
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Born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm. Descended from Olof Rudbeck, a famous Swedish biologist known for discovering the lymphatic system (around 1653). He learned the basics of engineering from his father, Immanuel Nobel, and, like his father, possessed an inventive talent. The Nobel family moved to St. Petersburg in 1842 to reunite with their father, who was then living there.
From a young age, Alfred Nobel was primarily educated by private tutors and became a capable chemist at the age of 16, fluent in English, French, German, Russian, and Swedish. In 1850, he left Russia for Paris to study chemistry and worked under the guidance of Jules émile Verneuil (the builder of the ironclad warship "M?nich") for four years in the United States. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, he worked in his father's factory until it went bankrupt in 1859.
After returning to Sweden, Nobel began manufacturing liquid explosives, nitroglycerin. Shortly after the production of this explosive, a factory explosion in 1864 killed his youngest brother, Emil, and four others. Due to the extreme danger, the Swedish government prohibited the reconstruction of the factory, and Nobel, who was considered a "scientific madman," was forced to conduct experiments on a boat on a lake to find ways to reduce the risks of handling nitroglycerin. By chance, he discovered that nitroglycerin could be absorbed by dry diatomaceous earth; this mixture could be transported safely. This discovery enabled him to improve dynamite and the necessary detonators. Dynamite was patented in the UK (1867) and the US (1868), and Nobel then experimented and developed a more powerful explosive of the same type, blasting gelatin, which was patented in 1876. About a decade later, he invented the earliest smokeless nitroglycerin propellant. He once requested that the patent for the propellant include that of Kodak explosive, but the court rejected it.
Nobel held shares in the explosives industry worldwide, along with his ownership in the Baku oil fields in Russia, making his wealth enormous. As a result, he had to travel constantly around the world.
Nobel was fundamentally a pacifist, hoping that his destructive inventions would help end war, but he had a pessimistic view of humanity and nations. He had a lifelong passion for literature and wrote some poems in English during his youth. Later, his manuscripts also revealed the beginning of a novel he had written. He was very generous in donating to humanitarian and scientific charities, leaving most of his wealth to a trust and establishing what later became the highest honor in the world—the Nobel Prize, which includes five categories: Peace, Literature, Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine (the Nobel Prize in Economics was later added in 1968 by the Swedish National Bank).
Nobel remained unmarried and had no children. Much of his life was spent suffering from illness. He had two famous quotes: "I care more about the stomachs of the living than the monuments to the dead." and "I do not see that I should deserve any honor, and I am not interested in it." He passed away on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy, at the age of 63.
Nobel's tombstone is a simple, 3-meter-high, gray pyramid-shaped monument. It bears the word "Nobel" in gold letters on the front, along with his birth and death dates. The sides of the monument are inscribed with the names and birthdates of his four relatives. On the right side of the monument, there is an engraved plaque with the number: 170/1678. Surrounding the monument are ten cypress trees, each taller than a person. The tombstone lacks a portrait of Nobel (rumored to be the only one ever made of him), elaborate decorations, or any mention of his glorious legacy in human history. Anyone who knows Nobel and stands before his tomb will be struck by the profound impact of its simplicity.